


Dead man walking

by Yuu_chi



Series: resurrection 'verse [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-11-15 05:57:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 44,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20861357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: A month after Richie helps bury him, Eddie Kaspbrak turns up on his doorstep.





	1. Chapter 1

The month after Eddie’s death is the worst of Richie’s life. 

He thinks that says something considering when he was thirteen he spent his summer being terrorized by a fucking child-eating clown, slipping and sliding along red-running sewers and biting his nails to the quick, wondering if he’d be dead before they ever had a chance to grow out again. 

After Eddie though - and he still can’t stand to think about the fact there’s now a neatly partitioned part of his life that is ‘After Eddie’ - he struggles to put one foot in the other, shuffle through the endless stretch of days left to live now that It’s gone and the future is more a promise than an uncertainty. 

He drinks most nights until he passes out, and then, when his guard is down, he dreams of Eddie - of the warm splatter of his blood all over Richie’s face, the soft swoop of his mouth as it fell open in shock. He’d been looking Richie right in the eye when that barb when through his chest, and that adrenaline filled adoration had turned to horror in a heartbeat. 

When Richie wakes he starts drinking again. Whisky washes the feeling of Eddie’s cold skin from his mind, and he leans into it desperately. 

It’s simpler like that. Easy. Nothing can hurt him - nothing can touch him - if he takes himself too far from its reach. Richie Tozier perfected the fine art of running from his fears when he was a teenager, and he’s had decades to hone his art since. 

Once - and only once - he buys a little baggie of cocaine from an old dealer and snorts it in a crooked line on his messy kitchen counter. It’s been a good ten years since he last did something so stupid, and it burns like a bitch as it goes, but the noise in Richie’s brain is too quiet and he needs it to be louder, he needs to _ drown _in it until his brain can’t think at all anymore. 

That night he doesn’t sleep but he does have a particularly vivid hallucination about Pennywise’s bright red fingertips clawing every inch of skin off his body, so the cocaine goes in the bin alongside three empty bottles of Jack. 

Beverly comes to visit him three weeks and four days after Derry (After Eddie) and she brings with her a smile bright enough to dim some of the haunted corners in Richie’s head and a stern but loving disapproval as she picks her way across his mess of a living room. 

“Really making the most of the bachelor life, aren’t you?” she says, righting an armchair Richie can’t even remember knocking over. “If we took all your bottles to one of those trade-in places, we could probably pay off the national debt.” 

“I’m trying a new decor style,” Richie says, awkwardly smoothing out an afghan his mother crocheted him on the back of his couch. It sticks out like a sore thumb among the takeout cartons and empty beer bottles. “Really give this feng shui shit a go, you know? Might go crazy and put in a pot plant or something while I’m at it. Just go buck wild.” 

Beverly, who’s started picking up Richie’s trash like it’s no big deal, looks up and smiles, amused. “Remember when you tried to start an herb garden in the Clubhouse?” 

Richie does remember. He remembers Eddie saying, one day, “_Did you know that homegrown vegetables are supposed to be at least ten times healthier than the shit you get at the grocery store? None of the chemicals they put in the dirt. At least that’s what my mom says.” _Richie had gone down to that same grocery store the next day and blew all his allowance on a few thin packets of starter seeds. Unsurprisingly, given the sheer volume of soil keeping the watery sunlight from the Clubhouse, the seeds had struggled to even sprout, let alone grow, but it’d been worth it for the way Eddie had fawned over the stupid things like they were gold. 

“No,” Richie says. “No, I don’t remember at all.” 

Beverly’s sad smile says she doesn’t believe him for a moment. She wanders into the kitchen to ditch the armful of trash in the recycle bin, and when she comes back out again she offers him a fresh bottle. He takes it gratefully. 

She stays for two days, sleeping in his most pristine guest bedroom, and they spend their nights sitting out on his fancy deck that overlooks his fancy pool, smoking like chimneys and sharing a bottle of mediocre wine between them. Richie had finished off the good stuff not long after the hard liquor, and he’s meandering his way through the rest of his stash, making up for the dip in quality with an increase in quantity. 

“You know,” Beverly says on her last night, legs tucked neatly together in the sprawling deckchair, her sundress caught at her knees, “Ben and I have spare rooms too. If you wanted to come stay with us. Get out of the house for a while.” 

“God no,” Richie groans. “You couldn’t pay me to shack up with you two lovebirds. You’ve got thirty years of sexual tension to work through, and you’re a lovely woman Bev, but I really think I’ve seen all of you I need to see. Don’t need to walk in on -.” 

She swats him on the arm hard enough to bruise and Richie winces, only a little bit theatrically. “Beep beep, Richie,” she says, but she’s smiling. 

Quiet falls over them like a gentle blanket. The water in Richie’s pool laps against the sleek concrete containing it. When Richie’s not at his best, which is often, he thinks it sounds a little like how blood does as it chases after his retreating toes. 

He’d spent twenty-seven years living in ignorance of all the things he’d survived in Derry, and now it haunt him like a ghost; at the edge of his every thought, close enough to be a second skin. 

Beverly says, “We’re worried about you.” 

“Ben would worry about a stranger he met on the street,” Richie says, a touch too breezily to be genuine. 

“_All _of us, Richie,” Beverly says sharply. Then, gentler, “You’re not coping. Anybody can see that.” 

“You and the rest of the Losers been gossiping about me?” Richie says. “Bit of a nasty habit.” 

“Richie,” Beverly sighs. She straightens up, setting down her glass, and Richie winces. “You know that’s not what I meant. It’s … you know it’s okay to grieve, right?” 

The smile Richie bites back pulls so taunt on his lips it’s a wonder it doesn’t snap him in two. He knocks back the last of his drink and then reaches for Beverly’s for good measure. The wine doesn’t taste any better from her glass than it had from his. “It’s fine, Beverly. _ I’m _fine. I already have a therapist I pay unfortunately well.” 

“And what do you tell them, Richie? Really?” 

Despite himself, Richie can feel himself rising to the bait. He’s jittery, uncomfortable in the open night, the heavy but well intentioned pressure of Beverly’s words. “I tell them that something bad happened to me when I was a kid, and I tell them that something bad happened to me again thirty years later.” He doesn’t realize his hands are shaking until he sets Beverly’s empty glass down, the chatter of it against the tabletop like static. “And I tell them that I - that _ we _lost somebody.” 

“Somebody?” Beverly pushes. “Or -.” 

“_Bev,” _ Richie says, and he almost does not recognize his voice, like the sharp snap of a gunshot in the darkness. Beverly goes quiet abruptly, and Richie rubs his hands over his face, trying to chase the shakes away. “Bev,” he says again. “I _ can’t _, okay? I just - I can’t.” 

Quiet for a moment. Richie uses it to gather himself, raking in the pieces of his armor that are flaking off him faster than he can stand to rebuild it. His face feels wet - _ blood in the dark _\- but when he presses his fingertips to his cheek there’s nothing there. 

He breathes out. Steady. _ Steady_. 

Beverly says, “Ben and I got a dog.” 

Richie is so grateful he could cry. 

That night, after Beverly retires to her room and Richie retires to his, he lays on his back, expensive sheets mussed beneath him, and stares at the ceiling. 

When he was a kid, after It but before their memories were taken, he used to think about the future with an obsession that bordered on the fanatical. He’d had it all planned out; the fame, the money, the career. He’d gotten it, too, the way Richie tends to get most things if he chases them hard enough. 

Quietly, secretly, in the most hidden places of his mind, there’d always been a shadow at his shoulder - a confession that, even then, he knew he’d never have the guts to make. 

Richie rolls over, face pressed into his cold pillow. It’s fine. _ He’s _fine. Richie got used to loneliness thirty years ago; he’s now a practicing professional, one more bad day away from hanging up a shingle and making a profit off it all. 

_ He’s fine_. 

He sees Beverly off at the airport at eleven AM the next morning, and she hugs him so fiercely it’s a wonder that his bones don’t pop. 

“Call,” she insists. “More regularly than you do, please, or I’ll be back over here and messing up your guest bedroom before you even have a chance to miss me.” 

“Geez, Bev, I’m not sure how Ben’s going to feel about that,” he says. “Although, if you _ really _want to elope, all you need to do is -.” 

She pinches his side, her bright blue fingernails almost as sharp as her smile. “Beep beep,” she says, and then kisses him on the cheek before she’s swept away into security and gone. 

Richie goes back to his empty house alone. 

He’s used to it, he reminds himself. A practicing professional. 

.

Thirty-six days after Eddie dies, Richie finally tells his therapist the truth. Well, an abbreviated version of the truth. A version that doesn’t involve killer clowns and Deadlights and Richie thinking about how he wished he’d died in that godforsaken sewer. 

“Grief is normal,” says his therapist, Ella, who’s truly a gem in a field full of mud. “However you choose to express that grief is normal too. You need to remember that.” 

(Beverly sitting on his porch, wine in hand, saying, _ You know it’s okay to grieve, right?) _

Richie says, “Pretty sure you’re meant to be encouraging me towards sobriety, not the complete opposite.”

Ella smiles, folding her legs neatly. The little notepad she uses for their session rests atop her bare knee. “I said normal, not useful.” 

Richie places a hand over his heart. “Ouch, doc. I think I need to have words with whoever gave you your diploma.” 

He’s lying, of course. She’s the first therapist he’s seen who treats him like he’s a person and not some delicate thing made of glass. Richie would sing her praises from every rooftop from here to Seattle if he could. 

Ella says, “You’re dealing with a loss, and a loss is always going to feel like exactly that.” 

“Like a black hole in my stomach?” Richie says, aiming for joking and falling completely flat. “_God_.” He scrubs a hand through his hair, which is already looking like the nest of a wild thing. “It’s so fucking stupid. I didn’t - I hadn’t seen him for nearly thirty fucking years. _ I forgot he existed_. It should be physically impossible for it to be this…” Richie doesn’t have words for what it is. 

Gently, Ella says, “You can’t measure human emotions by statistical probabilities.” 

That sticks with Richie, even when he leaves her office for the day. It sticks with him when he gets home, shrugging off his coat and leaving it sprawled over the sofa, making a beeline towards his newly replenished bar.

Eddie and Richie had always been kind of impossible. Not just - not just all the useless, wistful thought Richie had about them, but everything. They were polar opposites, existing on entirely different planes of reality. Richie, a vortex of disaster, and Eddie, so careful and meticulous in everything he did. 

Statistically improbable. And yet they had, for a time, been friends. 

Richie hesitates, staring at the fresh bottle of whisky sitting innocuously at his fingertips. 

Then again, Eddie had been afraid of fucking _ everything_. Of dirt and gems, of too little emotion and too much emotion; of everything under the sun and then some. Richie supposes they’d had that much in common, at least. 

Richie leaves the bottle where it sits. It’s too early to go to bed, but he’s feeling a little like he’s been run over. An emotional train wreck, leaking unpleasant, awful thought from all the cracks he’s done his best to screw back into place. 

He has a TV on the wall opposite his bed, and Richie flips through it mindlessly as he hunkers down beneath the covers. He flies past horror movies and the nightly news - nearly indistinguishable these days - and barely pauses as he sees his own face staring back at him from the comedy channel. Eventually he settles on some old war documentary, the colors dull and the sad murmur of noise static in his large and silent house. 

Sometimes, and Richie will never admit this out loud, it helps to be reminded that there are other people out there bearing tragedies just as heavy as his own. War widows and childless mothers who have been miserable for far longer than Richie can ever hope to imagine but now knows he can look forward to finding out. 

For the first time in over a month, Richie falls asleep sober and just as goddamn fucking _ sad_. 

.

At first Richie isn’t sure what’s woken him. 

The TV is still going, a muted background noise, and the clock by his bed tells him it’s barely midnight. Richie would be more alarmed except for the fact he gave up his fear of the witching hour when he was thirteen years old and learnt that the awful, monstrous things of the world weren’t limited by something as benign as daylight hours. 

He lays there, blinking blearily up at his ceiling fan, before he hears it. 

_ Knock-knock. _ Pause. _ Knock-knock-knock_. 

Somebody’s at his goddamn door. At fucking ass o’clock at night, the first time Richie is making a fairly solid effort to be a reasonable, respectable human being and not just the ghost of one that haunts his own house. 

For a moment he really considers rolling over and just going back to sleep, but the only thing stronger than Richie’s complete lack of self-control is his insatiable curiosity. He curses softly, kicking back his sheets and fumbling for his glasses on the bedside table. He jabs himself in the eye before he can get them settled on his face. 

Out in the hallway, the knocking comes again, louder, more insistent. Richie scowls as he tosses back the deadbolt. “Hold on, I’m coming, Jesus, do you know what fucking _ time _it is?” 

He throws the door open. 

The next words on his tongue trip and stumble into silence. His heart stops beating. Richie wonders if he’s having a heart attack. An aneurysm. For certain, he shouldn’t have joked about being a ghost, because he’s one more missed heartbeat from becoming one. 

Eddie Kaspbrak is standing on his doorstep. Or something that looks incredibly like him anyway. 

“Hey,” The-Eddie-Thing says, kind of sheepish and so, _ so _familiar. “I didn’t - I didn’t know where else to go.” 

He looks just like how Richie remembers. More haggard maybe. Bags beneath his eyes, and hands tucked in the pockets of an over large sweatshirt, but considering the last time Richie had seen him he’d been _ dead _he looks positively ethereal by comparison. 

Ethereal and _ impossible_. 

“Richie?” 

“Oh, fuck no,” Richie says, and steps back, slamming the door. 

He finds his phone half buried beneath the decorative throw pillows on his couch. Mike’s number three on his speed-dial, and the ring in his ear seems to drag on for all eternity. There’s pounding at the door, and then The-Eddie-Thing shouts, “Richie! Come on, asshole!”

There’s a click as the call connects, and then Mike’s saying, “_Richie, is that you? Is everything okay? Isn’t it like midnight over there?” _

“Yeah, hey Mike,” Richie says, tripping over his own words in the rush to get them out. “I think we fucked up. It’s back.” 

A pause. The pounding on his door continues. The-Eddie-Thing hollers, “Richie, I swear to _ god!” _

_"It can’t be back, Richie. We killed it, remember? This time for sure._” 

“No, yeah, I remember that - but I’m telling you, It’s back, Mike. It’s standing on my fucking doorstep. You’ve gotta - you’ve gotta get over here and help me.” Or else Richie is going to cave and open that fucking door, he knows he will, because Eddie - The-Eddie-Thing - is still calling out to him, and the awful mess of his heart is beating like a drum; it doesn’t know that this is impossible, it doesn’t know that Eddie Kaspbrak is incredibly definitely dead in some long forgotten tunnel back in Derry. All it knows is that the same voice he’s been dreaming about for a month straight is calling to him, and it wants to go to it like Richie’s never wanted anything else in his whole life. 

“_Richie,”_ Mike says in a very careful tone, _ “Are you drunk?" _

“Am I - what? No!” 

“_High?”_

“Mike, I’m not anything - I’m just fucking _ terrified_.” Abruptly, Richie realizes he’s going to be sick any second now, and he staggers to the kitchen, barely managing to hunch over the sink in time as he pukes up the last of his half-digested dinner. 

“_Richie? Richie, are you still there?” _

Richie gags, spitting out a mouthful of bile. He’s shaking like a leaf. Adrenaline always hit him like this; a kick to the gut, a physical force as irresistible as gravity. To Mike, he says, “I’ve gotta go.” 

_"Richie -._” 

Richie barely remembers to hang up before he drops his phone to the floor. He curls his fingers over the edge of the basin and throws up one last time for good measure. A deep breath in. He holds it long enough that his lungs start to scream. Out again. 

He rinses his mouth with tap water and then heads back into the foyer. 

When he opens up the front door, The-Eddie-Thing is still there; leaning against the wall like even standing up straight is taking too much out of him. He turns his head, and the dark brown of his eyes catches on the porch light. 

Richie swallows thickly. It should be impossible, he thinks, to still be this stupidly in fucking love with a man he helped bury a month ago. “How do I know you’re really Eddie? That you’re not just Pennywise 2.0 fucking with me?” 

The-Eddie-Thing says, “Because I wouldn’t be fucking with you, I’d rather be out there fucking your mother, Trashmouth.” 

Silence. 

_ Oh thank god_, Richie thinks, near hysterical. He takes a neat half step back and holds the door open, because he thinks if he does anything else at all he’s going to burst. 

“Well,” Richie says as primly as he can manage, “I guess you better come in then, huh?” 

.

Richie, for lack of anything better to do, sticks Eddie in the shower and has a minor meltdown while he searches for something for him to wear that won’t dwarf him.

Truthfully, he knows he’s being very dumb about this. After everything Pennywise could and did do, this would be child’s play. But the thing in the shower isn’t a thing - it’s _ Eddie_. Richie would recognize him anywhere; it doesn’t matter that Eddie has been out of his life longer than he’s been in it. Sometimes a person just digs themselves so far into your bones that you couldn’t pry them out if you tried. 

Derry took Eddie from him once (twice) but Richie has a grip like an iron trap when he wants to, and this time he’s ready to sink his fingers in deep. 

The shower in the master ensuite shuts off behind the door. Richie startles, scrambling to pile together the old sweatpants and shirt he outgrew about three years ago when he gave up even pretending to go to the gym. From the bathroom, Eddie calls out, “Richie?” 

“Yeah, I’m coming.” Richie’s voice comes out pitched just a little too high. He cracks open the bathroom door, instantly buffeted by a gust of steam, blurring his glasses. He tries to keep his breathing steady as he holds out the bundle to the slightly smudged shape standing by the sink. “I didn’t have anything from the kid’s department, but these should do, I guess.” 

“Fuck you,” Eddie says without any acid at all. Their fingers brush as he accepts the clothes. It’s the first time they’ve touched since he arrived, and Richie’s heart lurches into his throat. Eddie’s skin is warm and soft; it’s not the skin of a corpse or a monster. “You’re not that much taller than me.” 

The steam is clearing from Richie’s lenses. He can see Eddie’s tousled hair, the perfect brown of his eyes. He has a towel around his waist, but Richie isn’t even looking at that. He’s staring at his chest - at the splintering scar blooming across his ribcage. 

Richie clears his throat, wrenching his gaze away and stepping awkwardly backwards. “I’ll just be - uhh.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, in the vague direction of the living area. “Drinking myself into oblivion.” 

He shuts the bathroom door before Eddie can say something to that, escaping out of the bedroom, chasing cool air until he feels like he can breathe without vomiting. He thought the illusion of distance would help, but every step he puts between them winds the crank between his shoulders tighter and tighter. 

The whisky is waiting reliably for him on the bench where he’d left it, and he pours himself a very generous few fingers into the cleanest glass he has left at this point. He chokes it down, wincing on the burn, and immediately pours himself another. 

He’s sitting on the sofa working on his third glass when Eddie finally wanders out, dressed in Richie’s loose clothing and drying off his hair with a towel. Richie does not drop his glass, because he has, however sparingly, a modicum of self-control, but it’s close. 

The shower had urged more color into Eddie’s skin, warming it from a sallow grey into a soft pink, his hair ruffled and messy. He looks a kind of way Richie hasn’t seen in nearly thirty years - a kind of way he’s certain he’d have spent those years dreaming about if It hadn’t robbed him of the chance for that too. 

Eddie sits down beside him, near enough that their knees knock. Richie does not manage to bite back a sharp breath at that, but he thinks, given the situation, he might be permitted a little leeway.

He offers Eddie his half-finished glass, brow raised in question. After a considerable pause Eddie takes it. His mouth brushes against the smudge Richie’s lips had left along the rim. The face he pulls as he drinks is kind of hilarious, but Richie generously does not poke fun at him. 

Around the glass, Eddie says, “Stop looking at me like that.” 

“And how would that be, Eds?” Richie asks, as easily as he can. He keeps his hands knotted in his lap, as if he can keep the shakes from giving him away with willpower alone. 

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says, automatic and rote. He lowers the glass, looking guardedly at Richie. “And I mean like you’re expecting me to drop dead any second.” 

The laugh Richie lets out is very loud and equally hysterical. Eddie winces, but Richie just does not have the emotional bandwidth to feel bad about that right now. “Well, _ Eds_, I mean, going by past precedence it seems a fairly valid concern at this point, don’t you think?” 

The corner of Eddie’s mouth turns down viciously. He glances away, down at the empty whisky glass he’s turning nervously in his hands. Richie watches him, the swoop of his wet hair across his forehead, the faint lines around his eyes. 

Eddie says, “So I was - that really happened.” 

Richie stares at him. “What? The you _ dying _ part?” 

Eddie looks up, scowling in a way that even thirty years of absence couldn’t scrub from Richie’s memory. “No, the part where we all had a pleasant reunion and then went for a nice stroll into the Barrens. _ Yes, _the ‘me dying part’, you asshole.” 

Richie held up his hands. “Hey, you’re the one who showed up on _ my _ doorstep a month after -.” Richie chokes. He can’t get the words out; not even with Eddie sitting here, breathing and _ alive _ \- he just _ can’t_. 

Whatever expression he’s wearing must be real bad, because Eddie immediately drops the glass in his hand atop the coffee table and reaches for him, fingers winding gently around Richie’s wrists. “Richie, Richie - I’m here, alright?” 

“Are you, though?” Richie asks, and the hysteria is back, chasing the breathless hiss of his words. “Because I gotta tell you man, from where I’m sitting this seems like just another bad dream.” 

Eddie’s eyes crinkle in the corner. “Bad dream? Thanks, Richie. Glad to know my miraculous revival means so much to you.” 

It’s stupid, Richie thinks, that he’s built a whole career on the back of his ability to twist words into the shape he needs them to take, but right now they’re the ones twisting him instead. “No, I mean - Jesus, Eddie. The dreams aren’t the bad part - the fact I fucking have to _ wake up _is.” 

Eddie looks floored. Richie doesn’t blame him. He wouldn’t know what to say to that either. Richie’s usually better about keeping his mouth shut when it comes to the important things, really he is, but he’s not functioning at his best right now, and he can hardly be expected to keep a handle on half the shit that comes out of his mouth. 

The silence hangs, suffocating and heavy, and then Eddie says, “I think only the person who died gets to go around sounding that miserable, Trashmouth.” 

Despite himself, Richie can’t help but ask, “What do you remember? I mean, about -.” 

“I know what you mean, Richie,” Eddie says, and there’s just that faintest spark of annoyance in his voice. “It’s not like we’re exactly being coy here.” 

Richie holds up a hand. He’s tempted to prod back, spiral them into a familiar argument he’s sure would soothe the faint fear still crawling in the back of his mind, but he thinks maybe Eddie’s not really in the headspace for that right now, and fighting with an Eddie who’s not fully committed to it is never actually any fun at all. “You don’t have to talk about it,” he says. 

“No, it’s not that, I just…” Eddie’s eyes are unfocused, gazing at a point somewhere far past the limiting walls of Richie’s house. “I remember the sewers,” he says. His thumbs are pressed against Richie’s pulse points, a gentle pressure on the softest parts of his wrists, but if he’s at all aware of the way Richie’s heart is pounding he doesn’t show it. “I remember… It had you. In the Deadlights.” 

Richie swallows thickly. Just another thing he can’t bring himself to think about. He’s forgotten most of whatever he’d seen in the Deadlights, but the memory of it lingers like cobwebs at the back of his mind, like if he were just to reach, it’d reach back. He doesn’t. He won’t. What he _ does _remember is this - the things that hide in the Deadlight aren’t the kind of things that ought to be remembered. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It did.” 

Eddie’s gaze sharpens, flicking back to him. The corner of his mouth turns up, just a little bit. As close to smug as Eddie gets. “I saved you,” he says. “I saved your _ ass_, Tozier.” 

That’s a memory the Deadlights hadn’t taken with it, although Richie desperately wishes it had. The ghost of Eddie’s blood is still warm on his cheeks. “Sure,” he says. “Then It threw you aside like a ragdoll, so I’m not so sure you came out on top there.” 

The brightness in Eddie’s eyes dims. “I remember that too,” he says. One of Richie’s wrists slips from his grip, and slowly, as if he’s not even aware he’s doing it, Eddie grazes his fingertips along the place on his chest that should be gaping and gory beneath his shirt. “That was…” he swallows. 

“That wasn’t my favorite part either,” Richie says, aiming for levity. Carefully, he slips himself free of Eddie’s grip and, before he can talk himself out of it, flips their hands, sliding along the warm skin of Eddie’s palm until their fingers catch and slot. “Forget the sewers. We were both there for that. That’s old news. What about after?” 

Eddie’s looking at where their hands are resting atop Richie’s knee. He doesn’t look like he’s about to have a panic attack, but the sharp way his nails bite into Richie's skin says otherwise. Richie doesn’t blame him. The only thing keeping him from a truly hysterical freak-out is three glasses of whisky and the warm weight of Eddie beside him on the couch. 

“The Barrens,” Eddie says. “I remember the Barrens.” 

“The Barrens?” 

“I woke up there,” Eddie says. His nose crinkles and a look of disgust passes over his face. “I was just lying in the dirt. God, I should have stopped for a tetanus shot before coming here. Who knows what’s hiding in those bushes.” 

“Eddie, I think if anything was going to kill you it might have been the giant monster pincer that struck right through your chest; you’re probably safe from tetanus.” 

Eddie’s grip on his palm tightens from ‘moderate but fine’ to ‘downright vicious’ and yep, there’s that panic attack Richie’s been waiting for, creeping up along the reddened corners of Eddie’s eyes, shortening his breath. It’s amazing how familiar it is; all the signs and symptoms Richie’s remembered even after all this time. 

“That’s not comforting,” Eddie says. “That’s even more reason. Who knows what something like that does to a person?” 

“Well, usually, it kills a person, but you’re sitting here so I think we can safely say we’re working off a new rule sheet.” 

Eddie punches him in the arm hard enough to hurt. “That’s not funny, you asshole,” he snarls. He tries to pull away, shake his hand free from Richie’s, but Richie holds tight, reels him back in expertly because Eddie’s panics are best treated by touch and never distance. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Richie says. “I’m just - you’re not the only person a little freaked out here, Eds. I’m really trying to roll with this whole thing, I promise.” Eddie doesn’t look any more calmed, so Richie reaches up and manages to press his clammy palm to his cheek. “Eddie, Eds; look at me, okay? You’re here, you’re alive; whatever happened in the sewer, it’s done with now.” 

“We don’t know that,” Eddie argues, reaching up to wrap his fingers around Richie’s wrist. “What if this time tomorrow I just - drop dead? What if I’m not even _ human _ anymore?” 

Richie has never realized just how long his list of things he cannot afford to think about truly is until this moment; growing ever longer with every word out of Eddie’s mouth too. He blurts, “How are you feeling? Hungry?” 

“How am I - _ what _?” Eddie blinks owlishly at him. 

Richie wiggles his eyebrows. “Got a craving for human flesh, handsome? I’m sitting right here; practically a free buffet.” 

Eddie’s brain finally seems to catch up. “Are you asking me if I’m a _ zombie _?” 

“Well? Are you?” 

“I - Richie, I’m this close to punching you again, I swear.” 

The bruise Eddie had left blooming on Richie’s arm twinges. “I’ll take that as a no,” he says. He skates his hand up, fingers brushing the hair from Eddie’s face. Up close like this, finally, _ finally _getting a good look at all the new-but-familiar angles of Eddie’s face, Richie’s heart hurts something furious. “Still look human enough to me, Eds.” 

Eddie lets out a shaky breath that Richie can feel along his skin. Again, he insists, “You don’t know that.” 

“I know _ you_,” Richie says. 

“You don’t - it’s been twenty-seven years, you can’t -.” 

“Eddie,” Richie says firmly. “Look me in the eye and tell me right now that you don’t know _ me_; that just because we spent a few lousy years living on opposite sides of the country means we’re strangers again.” 

“Three decades is a little more than a few years,” Eddie says weakly. A pause; Richie waits as patiently as he can. Eddie says, “You’d tell me if I seemed different, wouldn’t you? If I seemed - more like It than me.” 

“In a heartbeat,” Richie promises.

That seems to do it, the magic words that Eddie needed to hear. His shoulders sink, the death grip he has on Richie’s hand loosens. A moment later, as if finally realizing how long they’d been sitting there holding hands, he retreats entirely, knees turning back to the room and hand withdrawing self-consciously to own lap. Richie, very bravely in his opinion, does not allow it to hurt him. 

“Fine,” Eddie says. “Okay. It’s fine. I’m fine.” 

“That’s the spirit,” Richie says. Before awkwardness can take root, he says, “Okay, we really should tell the others. I can -.” He gestures towards the kitchen where he left his phone, but when he goes to get to his feet, Eddie’s hand lands on his knee and slams him back down again. 

“Don’t,” Eddie snaps. Before Richie can even ask, the hand on his knee pulls back and Eddie says, “God, I’m sorry. I just - can we do it tomorrow? In the morning? I don’t think I’m up to having this conversation twice in a row.” 

Richie would have said yes to pretty much anything Eddie asked him right now, but seeing the exhausted look on Eddie’s face really drives it home. 

“Yeah, Eds, of course,” Richie says. “Whatever you need.” Then, because that had sounded just a little bit too genuine, Richie adds, “Dead man gets to call all the shots tonight.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, but Richie can tell he’s grateful for it. Richie doesn’t really deserve any measure of gratitude, truthfully, because the idea of having Eddie to himself for even the next few hours is enough to make him giddy. He’s selfish like that, he knows; always craving more than he really ought to have. 

“Thanks,” Eddie says. “Do you have a spare room I could borrow? I’m assuming you do, because if you were sold a house this big with only one bedroom then I can promise you that you got really ripped off.” 

“Of course I have a spare room, you little smartass. I’ll even be nice and give you the one that has a bed in it.” 

Eddie smiles and gets to his feet. “I don’t suppose you have a spare toothbrush too?” 

“Nope,” Richie lies cheerfully. “But you can borrow mine, of course.” 

It’s worth it for the absolutely revolted look on Eddie’s face. “Do you know how many germs are in the human mouth? I wouldn’t go near your toothbrush if you _ paid _me, Tozier.” 

Richie laughs. “You’re still so fucking weird about the dumbest shit,” he says. “Remember when we all cut our palms open on a dirty piece of glass and mixed our blood together? That’s fine but sharing a toothbrush is your hard limit?” 

“It wasn’t fine,” Eddie insists. “I was just a little distracted by the fact I thought we’d just killed a clown monster from outer space. My priorities weren’t back in order yet.” 

“Whatever you need to tell yourself, Eds,” Richie says, clapping Eddie on the shoulder as he steps past him to lead the way to the spare room. “C’mon, I’ll give you the grand tour while we’re at it.” 

.

Richie gives Eddie the good guest room, the one Beverly had been in less than a week ago. It still smells faintly of her perfume, and Richie can tell that Eddie recognizes it instantly, because the creeping tension in his spine goes slack and he breathes in deeply. 

Richie doesn’t judge him for it. He’d probably be like that too if the last time he’d seen his friends it’d been in the den of a monster that was rapidly coming down around their shoulders. 

“Well,” Richie says, rocking back on his heels. “You know where my room is if you need me.” 

“Your house isn’t _ that _ big,” Eddie says. “I’m sure I can find my way there without a map.” 

Richie offers him a smile that feels far more tentative than he’d like. “That’s - yeah.” He doesn’t know what to say. He feels strangely wrong footed. This is all still just a little too surreal for him. The fact that they should say goodnight and go to bed and function as normal people in the wake of such a revelation feels alien. But Eddie still looks exhausted, and Richie’s not so much of an asshole that he’d keep him awake just to satisfy his own selfishness. 

“Richie?” Eddie’s looking at him expectantly and Richie jerks back to reality. 

“I’ll just…” he takes a half step back towards the door, beating a retreat before he says something dumb. “Night, Eds.” 

“Goodnight, asshole,” Eddie says in return, and it’s just enough that Richie can force himself out of the guest room before he says something incredibly dumb. 

The clock by his bed reads just shy of three in the morning and the TV is still softly playing as Richie crawls into his bed. It’d been barely midnight when he’d called Mike. Three hours. Three hours ago Eddie was dead beneath Neibolt Street, and now he’s sleeping in Richie’s guest bedroom. Richie does not know what to do with that. 

Richie switches off the TV, plunging the room into darkness, and turns on his back, staring up at the slowly spinning fan above him. He breathes deeply and closes his eyes. He tries to sleep, honest to god he does. The adrenaline thrumming through him does not ease in the slightest. He opens his eyes again. The clock by the bed reads a very firm 3:17. 

He’s being ridiculous. Eddie’s just down the hall. He’s the nearest he’s been in literal decades; a couple of thin walls away instead of an entire coast - instead of a fucking _ life. _

_ But, _ whispers that tiny voice in his head, _ is he though? Is he really? _

What if he’s gone? What if the darkness stole him away? Even worse; what if he was never here at all? What if this whole fucking things is just a grief crazed hallucination on Richie’s part? His sanity has always been one firm shove away from plummeting off the tipping point, and it’s not farfetched to think that everything - It, Stan, _ Eddie _\- would be what finally pushes him over. 

Above him, the ceiling fan continues to spin lazily. The sheets are sticking to his sweaty skin. His heart is pounding in his chest, a sick thump against the fragile cage of his ribs. 

He barely survived losing Eddie once. He doesn’t know that he has it in him to live through it again. 

He kicks back the sheets tangled around his legs and stumbles out of bed. He half slams into the wall on his way out the door, wincing and hissing underneath his breath. He adjusts his glasses and slinks out into the hallway. 

The fancy skylights Richie had installed when he bought the place let just enough light in that Richie can see two feet in front of him and not much more than that. He shuffles forward, one hand to the wall, so focused on keeping himself from a completely unjustified freak-out that he doesn’t think to look where he’s going until he slams into something. 

Richie yelps at the exact same time Eddie shrieks, both of them grasping at each other’s shoulders for balance.

“Jesus _ fucking _-.” 

“Holy _ shit_, Richie, do you not watch where you’re walking?” 

“It’s the middle of the night! What are even doing skulking around?” Richie snaps. 

The scar on Eddie’s cheek looks silver in the faint moonlight. He folds his arms defensively across his thin chest, Richie’s shirt hanging off his skinny shoulders. “What are _ you _doing skulking around?” 

“I’m just…” Richie trails off awkwardly. They stare at each other. Rather suddenly, he feels incredibly stupid. “Come on. This is dumb. Let’s...” he motions in the direction of his bedroom. There’s sweat rolling down the back of his neck and he bites back on a shiver. 

Eddie hesitates for a moment. Richie can read his expression like a book; practically a second language to him, even now. Eddie’s pride, his guarded desire not to be disappointed, versus his need not to be alone, his tentative trust in Richie not to be the one to let him down. 

Richie can see the moment the debate is won. “Alright, Alright,” Eddie huffs. “You better not still kick in your sleep, asshole.” 

Richie absolutely still does. He gives Eddie his most charming smile, reaching out to snag his wrist. “Guess you’ll just have to find out, huh? Lucky you, Eds.” 

Back in Richie’s room, he watches as Eddie tentatively crawls into the far side of his sprawling king bed. It’s strange, honestly; not sharing a bed, but sharing a bed with so much _ space_. They’d slept next to one another all the time as kids - all of the Losers had. But, unlike the rest of them, it’d been a habit they continued as teenagers, sneaking in each other’s windows on bad night, skinny legs kicking out as they struggled beneath the covers, working not to wake the other one up and failing entirely.

The memory of Eddie’s sleeping face smushed into half his pillow hits Richie like a lightning bolt. Even now, a month after Derry - a month after _ It _ \- it’s amazing what half-forgotten memories his subconscious can drag up, punching him in the gut with barely any effort whatsoever. 

“What are you staring at?” Eddie snaps, and Richie starts. 

“Oh, you know, just thinking about how lucky I am,” Richie says breezily. 

“What - ?” 

“To have had both of the Kaspbraks in my bed,” Richie says. “Of course, with your mom I had to sleep on the floor. You know, because she took up the whole thing.” 

“Ha ha, very funny,” Eddie says. He pats the mattress beside him. “Could you lay the fuck down before I get a crick in my damn neck?” 

“So you _ do _think I’m tall,” Richie says, but he flops down on the messy sheets beside him. Eddie winces as the bed bounces, and Richie smiles into his pillow, quite pleased with himself. 

“I think you’re a giant.” 

“A giant?” 

“A giant pain in my ass,” Eddie grumbles, and Richie can’t help himself, he throws back his head, laughing helplessly until he’s wheezing. There’s a gentle touch at his wrist, and he turns his hand over, allows Eddie’s fingers to press softly against his skin.

“Eddie,” Richie gasps. “Eddie. Eds.” 

“What? Stop saying my name like that, I’m right here.” 

Richie rolls over so he can look at him; at his mussed hair, his dark eyes, the stark scar on his cheek. Eddie looks like every dream he can never remember having. He looks like every night Richie’s ever woken up gasping, heart pounding, sick to his stomach, wondering what it is that’s made his life feel so goddamn _ empty. _

“Eds,” he says. “You really have no idea how fucking much I’ve missed you.” 

Eddie’s face slackens in surprise for a moment, and then he smiles. Warm and familiar. His fingers are so _ nice _on Richie’s wrist. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I might have an idea.” 

They lay there, smiling at each other dopily for a long minute before Richie can gather the control to look away. The silence that falls over them is comforting. Richie feels as if he could just stay like this, basking in it until sleep takes them, but Eddie breaks it first. 

“I think I remember it,” he says, voice soft. It’s definitely ‘it’ not ‘It’ - Richie’s not sure why, but there’s a clear distinction there that he thinks all the Losers can hear now; a difference between ‘it’ as a common noun, and ‘It’ as the precursor to their horror story. 

Richie rolls over, so he can get a better look at him. Eddie’s staring at the ceiling, his thumb passing in shallow swipes across Richie’s wrist. Again, Richie wonders if he even knows he’s doing it. Richie’s certainly not going to be the one to tell him. “Remember what?” 

“Being dead,” Eddie says, and Richie’s heart tumbles over on its next beat. 

He doesn’t know what to say. For once, his trashmouth fails him. His mind is blank and the oceans of words that usually swim at his fingertips are dried up. “Eddie…” 

Eddie squeezes his wrist. “You can ask.” 

A small part of Richie doesn’t want to, but the larger, louder part that _ always _ wants to know about everyone and everything that touches Eddie _ does_. He keeps his eyes locked on the ceiling and he says, “What was it like?” 

Quiet for a moment. The fan rattles as it spins, and Richie watches every slow turn of the blades. After what could be a minute or a thousand years, Eddie says, “It was like being alive, but worse.” 

Richie kind of wants to laugh and he kind of wants to cry. Instead, he says, “What the fuck does that even mean, Eds?” 

Eddie laughs quietly, this tiny huff of a noise that sounds like Richie’s sheets feel on his skin. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s more of a feeling than anything else, you know?” 

“No,” Richie says, “I don’t know. You know why? Because I’ve never died, dipshit.” 

Eddie makes a soft, thoughtful noise. “I guess you’ll understand one day,” he says. 

Richie can’t help but shiver. Eddie’s voice sounds so distant; entire universes exist between them, galaxies that Richie will never know and can never name. Richie hates it desperately and fiercely. 

“Jesus, you came back one creepy little shit, didn’t you?” he says, and when he turns to look he can see Eddie’s face crack into a familiar, comfortable smile. 

“Oh, shut up asshole. You’re the one who asked.” 

“I didn’t realize you were going to go full dead man walking on me.” 

Eddie snorts, rolling over onto his side. “Yeah, yeah.” His hand finally slips from Richie’s wrist and he misses it instantly. “I’m exhausted. Shut up and let me sleep, would you?” 

“Maybe you wouldn’t be exhausted if you weren’t slinking around other people’s houses in the middle of the night.” 

Eddie gives him an amused look. “You really want to be throwing stones there, Richie?” 

“I never said that _ I _ couldn’t slink around my own house,” Richie says. “I paid good money for this property, you know. A man has _ rights_, Edward.” 

“If a man had rights, I’d never have to listen to a single thing that ever came out of your mouth again,” Eddie mutters, but the bite is gone from his comeback, and he’s sounding less and less awake the longer they talk. 

Kindly, Richie holds back on the next retort on the tip of his tongue. It’s worth it, because barely a few minutes later Eddie’s breathing slowly and deeply, asleep with his forehead knocking against Richie’s shoulder. 

Richie smiles, glad it’s dark because he can feel just how maniacal it is without ever needing it to be seen. He rolls to his side and carefully, reverently, lays a hand on Eddie’s waist. 

It takes him much longer to fall asleep, but the feeling of Eddie’s skin beneath his palm is far more soothing than the crying of the war-wounded could ever be. 

.

Richie wakes to the sound of pounding on his front door. _ Again_. It is not, he finds, an experience that improves with repetition. 

For a moment, he’s thrown back to midnight, thinking that when he struggles out of bed it’ll be to find Eddie waiting for him on his porch with dark eyes and a grim smile. Except when Richie rolls over, it’s Eddie’s shoulder he bumps into, and unless there’s something even more cosmically wrong with the universe than he realized, the chances of a second Edward Kaspbrak being on his doorstep aren’t great. 

“Richie?” Eddie slurs, voice sleepy and hair soft. He blinks at Richie like keeping his eyes open is a greater challenge than fighting a killer clown could ever hope to compete with. 

Richie clumsily pats his arm as he hauls himself out of bed. “Don’t worry about it, go back to sleep. I’ve got it.” 

Eddie makes a noise that might have been a protest or maybe an agreement, but a moment later he’s gone again. Richie allows himself just one moment to savor the sight of him in Richie’s bed before he heads out of the room and to the front door. 

Richie is expecting any number of people on his doorstep at six in the morning; his manager, furious that he hasn’t been picking up his phone, his neighbors, equally furious that Richie’s mail keeps somehow turning up in their mailbox despite the generous gap between their properties. Some kind of obsessed stalker maybe, now that Eddie’s proven just how insecure his personal information really is (thanks Eddie).

Nowhere on that list is Bill Denbrough, and yet here he is; face pinched and zipped up tight in a ragged sweatshirt that tells Richie that this visit hadn’t exactly been penciled in his busy schedule. 

“Bill? Holy shit, man. What the hell are you doing here?” Bill gives him a dark look and shoulders past him and into the house. Richie stands there for a second, holding the door like an idiot, before he thinks to shut it, turning around to say, “Yeah, come right in. Be my guest.” 

“Beep beep, Richie,” Bill says. He’s not quite as tall as Richie, had lost the advantage of height at some point in their equally lost years, but with the way he’s looming over him Richie might be convinced to think otherwise. “God, you’re an asshole, you know that?” 

Richie stares at him blankly. He’s not awake enough for this. He left all his functioning thoughts back in the bedroom with Eddie. “I mean, yeah, this is something we’ve all known for forty years, but -.” 

“Mike called me. Because I was the closest,” Bill says. “He says that you rang him in a flat out panic last night and then hung-up barely a minute later. He’s been trying to call you all night. Richie, he thought you had - that something had happened.” 

Richie’s stomach drops. He feels cold all over; bathed in ice and left to freeze. _ He thought you had _ \- yeah, Richie can guess what Mike thought he’d done. What Bill had thought he’d done. Something stupid, something _ permanent. _ He’d barely thought about how his stupid call to Mike probably sounded, too preoccupied with _ Eddie _to really think about the fact that reality doesn’t cease to exist just because Richie’s world had suddenly started spinning again. 

“Ah, fuck. Bill, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t - I wasn’t thinking.” Richie runs his hands through his hair, jittery. He can’t look Bill in the eye. “Last night I - it was…” He really does not have a single useful thing to say. Lamely, he repeats, “I wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry.” 

Bill holds himself tight for a moment - two - and then his shoulders sink. The silence cracks beneath the weight of his relief, and when he reaches out to pull Richie into a rough hug Richie can finally breathe again. “Jesus, Rich,” Bill says, voice muffled against Richie’s shoulder. “You’re going to give all of us a heart attack at this rate. Just because that damn clown didn’t kill us doesn’t mean you get to finish the job.” 

The second the weak joke is out of his mouth, Bill seems to realize how it sounded. He pulls back, hands still on Richie’s shoulders as if he expects him to instantly shatter at the reminder that Eddie didn’t, supposedly, survive the killer clown after all. “Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry, that was awful. This is why you’re the one who tells jokes and I’m the one who writes horror novels.” 

Richie, whose brain is still trying to function through the confused fog of the past twenty-four hours, says, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” 

Instead of reassuring Bill it, perhaps unsurprisingly, does the complete opposite. “Richie,” he says after an incredibly awkward pause, “are you - are you alright?” 

Richie supposes there’s probably not a delicate way to say ‘_you didn’t immediately break down into tears at the mere mention of your dead long-lost love, and I find this more than a little concerning’ _ but Bill does an admirable job all the same. 

“Uh,” Richie says, struggling for something intelligent to say. “I think I’m more alright than I’ve been in a while.” 

“That’s… good,” Bill says, not sounding for a second like he means it. Richie doesn’t need to be as sensitive to his friends as he is to feel the worried suspicion coming off him in waves. “Uh, kind of a surprise, but good. Did something happen?” 

There’s movement in the doorway behind Bill, and Richie ticks his gaze over his shoulder to see Eddie standing there, awkwardly rubbing his bare arms as he watches the scene. He’s wearing one of Richie’s sweaters, and it’s much too big on him, but he’s folded back the sleeves meticulously. Looking at him, Richie’s heart hurts and it feels _ fantastic_. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “You could say that, I guess.” 

Bill frowns, realizes that Richie isn’t looking at him, and twists, turning to follow Richie’s line of sight. His gaze lands on Eddie and he goes gunshot still.

“Good morning, Bill,” Eddie says weakly. 

“Eddie?” Bill sounded injured by the force of his shock.

“Surprise?” Eddie offers. 

Bill’s hands drop from Richie’s shoulder and in the blink of an eye he has his arms around Eddie in a hug so crushing that Richie winces on Eddie’s behalf. _ Nobody _hugs like Bill Denbrough, who doles out affection with a measured intensity none of them have ever been able to match. 

_“How?”_ Bill gasps, hands fisted firmly in the back of Eddie’s jumper. “You were - I saw you, we _ all _saw you.” 

Eddie pulls back and he looks uncertainly at Richie before glancing back to Bill. “I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, you’re right, I was definitely… definitely dead, but I guess something changed.” 

“You’re telling me,” Bill says. He sounds a little faint, and he shuffles back a step, clutching at Eddie’s arms as he looks him up and down as if searching for the magic glue that’s holding Eddie together again; some crack, a seam in the perfect picture Eddie presents. He can’t find anything though, that much is clear, because a moment later he turns to Richie again, looking as if he’d been slapped. “How long?” 

Richie holds his hands up. “He showed up on my doorstep last night. You don’t really think I’d keep this from all of you for more than like, twenty-four hours at a stretch, do you? Since when have you ever known me to keep my mouth shut?” 

“You should have called,” Bill says hotly. 

“Hey, hey,” Eddie says, wrenching Bill’s attention back to him. “I asked him not to, okay? I just came back from the damn dead, Bill. Give me a day at least to get my bearings.” 

Immediately Bill looks sheepish. “Sorry. I’m just - I can’t believe it.” He laughs, a shocked, wondering kind of sound. “The others are going to drop everything they’re doing and race over here the second you tell them, you know that right?” 

Eddie’s smile is small and nervous. “You’re not…” his voice trails off. He clears his throat and says, “You’re not, uh, worried that... I’m not me?” 

Without missing a beat, Bill says, “It’s dead.” His voice is firm; an unyielding truth of the universe presented as law. “We killed It. This time, It’s not coming back. There’s nothing else you can be. Besides,” the corner of his mouth pulls up into Richie’s favorite Bill smile; the uneven, amused one that has followed him from childhood, “if Richie says it’s you, I believe him. He’d know better than any of us.” 

Richie deeply does not want Eddie to think too hard about what that means, but luckily for him, Eddie just snorts and says, “Yeah, because Richie’s the real authority on knowing things around here.” 

Relieved to be back in familiar territory, Richie snaps his fingers and points at him. “Hey! You watch your mouth, I’m a walking _ encyclopedia _of all kinds of knowledge.” 

“Yeah?” Eddie says, quirking a brow. “Name one single thing you know that the rest of us don’t.” 

Richie grins and says, “Well, if you wanted to know so much about your mom, you should have just -.” 

Eddie throws his hands up and Richie, rather generously, cuts himself off before either of them can beep him. “Fine, whatever, I walked right into that one,” Eddie says. 

“Eds, baby, you just make it so easy,” Richie says, with a disgusting amount of affection that he can’t quite contain. If the side-eye Bill gives him is any indication, he’s nowhere near as subtle as he’s striving to be, but fuck him, fuck it all, Richie’s still riding the high of Eddie being back. 

The past month has been nothing but misery so deep Richie had really been struggling to imagine a day beyond it. This right here isn’t just a match in the darkness; this is a fucking _ supernova_; it’s a wonder Richie can even function with the fireworks going off in his head. 

Bill says, “Well, now that I’ve spoiled the surprise, do you think we can maybe let the rest of the Losers in on the big secret? I really don’t think I can keep it from them.” 

“It wasn’t a secret,” Eddie says instantly. “It was just a… a pause or something.” 

“I know, Eddie, I know. I’m not accusing you of anything.” Bill gives another one of his smiles. “Frankly, right now you could probably punch me in the damn face and I’d still forgive you. I think you get at least a week’s worth of goodwill when you rise from the dead.” 

“Just a week? Eds, you can do better than that. Bargain him up to at _ least _a month,” Richie says. “I’ve got a really good lawyer. Just say the word, and we’ll take this heathen to court.” 

Eddie smiles, and the look he gives Richie is both exasperated and affectionate. Richie’s heart shudders deeply, and he can’t believe how starved he feels for Eddie’s attention considering he’s had nothing but since he came back; Eddie touch-needy, sleeping in Richie’s bed, whispering to him in the darkness like this is how they should have been all along. 

“Do you think,” Eddie says, “that both of those things can wait a couple more hours at least? I’m still exhausted from…” he makes a vague gesture that Richie supposes is meant to encompass the miracle of resurrection. “And Bill just spent half the night driving across the city because you’re a fucking dumbass, Richie.” 

Richie makes an offended noise, but Bill speaks over him before Richie can pick at the thread of the truly promising fight Eddie’s offered him. “That sounds good.” He hesitates for a second before turning to Richie. “If you have a spare bed, I can -.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Richie says instantly, and the smile that breaks out onto Bill’s face is so relieved, and Richie knows he made the right call. 

Truthfully, he doesn’t feel ready to relinquish his monopoly over Eddie, selfishly wants to hoard him close, but despite what people might think, Richie’s capable of occasionally being a better person than that, and he doesn’t need Bill to tell him how very little he wants to retreat to an impersonal guest room, Eddie’s back vanishing from his sight. 

The three of them pile onto Richie’s bed, knocking elbows and knees in a strange mimicry of how they’d done exactly this a thousand and one times as kids, and Richie is actually very glad for his king bed in a way he hadn’t been previously. 

“Jesus, Eddie, did you get even skinnier?” Bill says when Eddie’s bony shin clips his side as they wrestle for an optimal position for three adult men crammed into one bed. 

“I hope not,” Eddie mutters. His hand lands on Richie’s hip, on the strip of skin between Richie’s boxers and his shirt, and Richie bites down on the sharp groan climbing his throat. 

“You’ll freeze come winter at this rate,” Richie jokes. The lights are out, and the room is mostly black, but he can see Bill’s broad shoulders, Eddie’s messy hair. “I’m sure when your wife imagined you coming back from the grave, she wasn’t hoping for an actual skeleton.” 

Eddie’s fingernails bite into his skin, a sharp warning that he immediately soothes over with his fingertips. “Beep beep, asshole,” he says. Then, before Richie can press his luck, “And shut up, Bill’s already asleep, you’re gonna wake him.” 

Faintly disbelieving, Richie twists, squinting through the dark, but Eddie’s right; Bill Denbrough is out like a light, chest falling and rising in perfect rhythm, breathing deeply. “Holy shit. Do you think if I asked he’d teach me how to do that?” Richie marvels, taking great pains to keep his voice down. “Sometimes I swear you could bottle and sell that guy. You’d make a damn fortune.” 

“More than your shitty jokes do at least,” Eddie says. 

“I told you, I don’t write my own stuff,” Richie sniffs. 

“Well,” Eddie says, and Richie can hear him smiling, “maybe that’s the problem, Trashmouth.” 

Before Richie can really take in the fact that Edward Kaspbrak just admitted that he thinks Richie’s actually _ funny, _the hand Eddie has on his hip slides up, patting Richie’s chest. 

“C’mon, I want to sleep some time this century.” 

_ I don’t, _ Richie thinks, despite the fact he is actually completely fucking _ exhausted_, because every second he’s asleep is a second he’s not marveling at Eddie’s sheer fucking existence, and that is just absolutely inexcusable. 

“How about instead you tell me again about all the wonderful cosmic realities I’ll understand when I die and I can -.” 

“Richie.” Another pat. “Sleep.” 

He reaches up, snagging Eddie’s hand. “I suppose, for you Eddie baby, I can try.” 

He can’t see well enough to tell if Eddie rolls his eyes, but the sigh that brushes Richie’s shoulder is more than enough. Eddie doesn’t reply, but he does wiggle a little bit closer, wedged between Bill’s back and Richie’s side. They’re not holding hands, not really, but the warmth of Eddie’s palm on his arm is more than enough to calm the last of his manic jitters. 

Eventually, Richie does falls asleep like that; bundled in a king sized bed with two of his favorite people in the whole fucking world.


	2. Chapter 2

Richie wakes up to an empty bed. It’d give him a bigger heart attack than it does but for the fact he can hear Eddie’s voice from somewhere down the hall and the crackle of the radio from the kitchen. 

He allows himself a moment to lay in the sheets and really soak it up, enjoy the novelty of waking up in his own house with other people present, with _Eddie _present, before he forces himself up. 

Bill’s in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee and some toast, morning paper from Richie’s porch fanned open on the bench. He looks up, smiling crookedly when he sees Richie lurching sleepily through the doorway. “Eddie’s in your office,” he says by way of greeting. 

Richie grunts as he gets a start on making his own coffee, nearly walking into the damn fridge before he gets his bearings. “He calling the others?”

“Skyping them. He said it’d be less stressful if we just stayed out of it so he didn’t have two extra people shouting in his face.” 

Richie waits as his expensive coffee machine struggles to spit out a mediocre espresso. “After you told them it really was Eddie and not some kind of mass hallucination, of course.” 

“Seeing is believing,” Bill mutters, and Richie can’t help but smile. 

The silence that lingers for a moment is well-worn and comfortable, as if they don’t have thirty lost years between them, and Richie will never stop wondering at this; the way all of the Losers can slip right back in each other’s pockets, as close and as unbreakable as they were as kids. Richie supposes that if Pennywise couldn’t ruin this for them, then there’s probably nothing that can. 

He snags his coffee and ambles over to lean on the opposite side of the bench Bill’s sitting at. “You think the others might at least give me a heads up before they show up on my doorstep? I’m running out of room here. I wasn’t expecting to start a Losers club collection.” 

Bill snorts. “I don’t really think you’re going to have much choice.” 

There’s the sound of footsteps in the hall and Richie looks up to see Eddie coming through the doorway, looking the most delightful mix of exhausted and indescribably fond. Richie supposes having all of your friends yell their affections at your miraculous survival at the same time might have that effect. 

Richie sips his coffee. It’s hot enough to burn. “Did Ben cry? Please tell me he did or I’m down twenty bucks.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes and tosses Bill back his phone. “Mike did,” he says. “He cried for at least ten minutes straight.” 

Richie sighs theatrically. “I’m always backing the wrong damn horse.” 

Bill offers Eddie the last of his toast and, after a moment of contemplation, Eddie takes it, sliding into the stool beside him. 

“Oh, so my mouth is a germ pit but Bill’s is okay?” 

Eddie looks him in the eyes as he crunches down on the toast. “Well, I know Bill brushes his teeth.” 

“I offered you my toothbrush!” 

“Circumstantial evidence. Just because you own one doesn’t mean you use it.” 

Richie places a hand to his heart, feigning injury, but Bill cuts them off, asking, “What did they have to say?” 

Eddie smiles. It’s soft and kind of surprised. He looks down at the bench, rubbing his thumb along the sharp corner of it. “They were good,” he says, and he sounds almost surprised, as if he hadn’t expected to be welcomed back with eager arms and open hearts. 

Richie, who will not stand for this attitude so early in the morning when he still feels as if he’s on cloud nine, reaches across the bench to pinch Eddie’s arm. “Hey, none of that. I’m putting an embargo on any self-deprecation in this household until further notice.” 

“I didn’t say anything!” Eddie says, incredulous, slapping Richie’s hand away. “I was just -.” 

“Eat your toast, Eddie,” Bill says wisely, shuffling the paper. 

Eddie looks mulish, but he does as he’s told. “Fine,” he says between bites, refusing to talk with food in his mouth like a true gentleman, “they’ve all made plans to be here by the weekend.” 

“The weekend?” Richie repeats, surprised. “I thought I’d be beating them back from my door with a stick.” 

“I told them I kind of wanted a couple of days to…” Eddie hesitates, picking the crust off his toast. “Adjust to being alive again, I guess.” 

Bill and Richie exchange glances. 

_What do we say to that? _Bill’s expression asks. 

_Fucked if I know, _Richie returns. _When have you ever known me to say the right thing?_

“Eds -.” 

Eddie clears his throat, cutting Richie off abruptly. “Anyway,” he says, dropping the eviscerated toast back on the plate, “that’s if you don’t mind me staying here that long.” 

“Uhh,” Richie says, baffled, because he doesn’t think _no, please, you’re more than welcome to stay forever _is what Eddie is actually aiming to hear even if it’s the truth. “Sure, you know that you’re more than welcome to crash here as long as you need. Mi casa su casa.” 

Eddie gives him a look. “Do you even know what that means?” 

“It was on Big Hero 6, so I’m assuming it’s something family friendly and appropriate.” Richie sips his coffee. “Give me five minutes and I’m sure I can find a way to fix that.” 

“Five minutes?” Bill says. “You’re getting slow in your old age, Trashmouth.” 

Richie holds up his coffee with a hangdog expression. “I just woke up. I’ve had a rough day, Big Bill. A rough _existence. _Think you could cut me a little slack, maybe?” 

Bill laughs quietly, folding the paper closed. “I’ll think about it,” he says, checking his wristwatch. “I should get going. I was supposed to have a meeting with my agent at eleven and it’s nearly twelve. I didn’t even tell him where I was going.” He pauses for a second and then adds, “Or my wife.” 

“Man,” Richie says sympathetically, “do you think maybe your wife might be kind of sick of you just vanishing off at the drop of a hat?” 

Bill sighs, getting to his feet. He plucks his phone and keys off the bench and stuffs them into his pocket. “Probably, but I don’t even know where to begin telling her about all of this shit without lying.” 

“Well,” Richie says, “maybe she didn’t even notice?” 

“I don’t think my wife failing to notice I’m gone is exactly the pleasant alternative you think it is, Rich.” 

Richie throws his hands up. “What do I know? Do I look like I’ve ever been married?” He rounds on Eddie, looking for some moral support. “Eds, back me up here.” 

Eddie doesn’t support him. Eddie is, instead, staring at the bench again with a pained expression like he’s thinking deep and uncomfortable thoughts, the kind of thoughts that are made of sharp angles that refuse to fit where you need them to fit. For a panicked moment, Richie doesn’t know what he’s said to put that kind of expression on Eddie’s face, but then Eddie says, “I don’t know if I’m exactly the authority you should consult on keeping secrets from your wife.” 

Richie processes that for a solid several second. He slams his mug down on the bench so hard he nearly slops coffee all over himself. “Hold on, are you saying you didn’t tell your _wife _that you’re alive and kicking?” 

“What was I supposed to say?” Eddie snaps, instantly defensive. “Besides, I don’t even know what you guys told her. It’s not like there’s exactly a protocol for this kind of situation!” 

“Well,” Bill interrupts before Richie can say something really dumb, “we told her that you were caught in the Neibolt house when it collapsed. Considering there’s no body, I think they listed you as ‘missing’.” 

The irony of it isn’t lost on Richie. For a moment, he can see the Neibolt flier in his shaking hands so clearly it hurts; his face staring back out at him, his name in faded ink beneath his blocky, childhood glasses.

“Missing,” Eddie repeats. He’s quiet for a moment and then, surprising both Bill and Richie, he sighs deeply and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I guess that explains why I was at least able to access my bank account. She hasn’t written me off all our assets yet.” 

The look Bill and Richie exchange this time is twice as baffled as before. 

“Uh, you okay there, Eds?” Richie asks tentatively. “You’re handling this… very well.” 

“I don’t think ‘well’ is the word I’d use,” Bill says. “Maybe ‘bizarrely’.” 

That wrangles a strangled smile out of Eddie. “Did she say whether she was going to come to Derry?” 

“If she did, she didn’t tell us,” Bill says. He hesitates for a moment, thinking of a polite way to phrase the next part of his explanation. Richie doesn’t. He’s never beaten around the bush before and he doesn’t plan to start now.

“Your wife was about as pleasant as Bower’s breath in middle school,” Richie says. “There was a whole lot of screaming at us about how we were probably the ones who got you killed. By the time she started slinging the insults, I hung up on her.” 

Eddie looks at him, surprised. “You were the one who called her?” 

Feeling oddly caught out, Richie splutters, “Why is that so surprising?” 

Eddie’s gaze lingers on him, heavy and speculating. The air feels crushed out of Richie’s lungs beneath the press of it. He strives to keep his face neutral, maybe faintly indignant. Anything that isn’t whatever Eddie’s searching for. Eventually, after what feels like a hundred years but can’t be more than a few seconds, Eddie looks to Bill. Richie can breathe again. 

“It’s alright. Probably easier that she didn’t. I can’t even imagine what Myra in Derry would have been like.” 

“Hell on earth?” Richie suggests. 

“Eddie,” Bill scolds. Then, before Richie can defend himself, he says, “Besides, I’m pretty sure Derry already _was_ hell on earth.” 

“Well, things can always get worse,” Eddie says, which doesn’t seem like something somebody should say about the person they supposedly chose to spend the rest of their life with, but Eddie’s already speaking to Bill again before Richie can prod at that. “You’ll be back next weekend, right? With the others?” 

Bill smiles, deep and warm. “Couldn’t keep me away if you tried,” he promises. Eddie stands up and Bill pulls him into a hug almost as tight as the one from the morning. “I’m not sure if I got to say it earlier, but welcome back, Eddie. We missed you, and we love you twice as much.” 

Richie’s positioned just so that he can see Eddie’s expression, and it’s one for the books. A slow blink of surprise, and then a fondness that brightens his whole face like a rising sun. “Yeah, Bill,” Eddie says. “I love you too.” 

Bill pulls back, patting Eddie’s shoulders briefly before he steps away. Richie says, “What? I’m good enough to supply the coffee but not to receive the dramatic farewells?” 

Bill laughs, reaching out to hug him too. Richie enjoys it unselfconsciously, soaking up the warmth of human contact as if he can store it away for a rainy day. 

“Alright,” Bill says, when Richie lets him go. “I really do have to go. I’ll text you when I’ve got a moment.” 

Eddie sees him out to the door, like a good host, and Richie, the actual homeowner, stays in the kitchen under the pretense of tidying up a little bit. He needs just a moment to get himself under control, check his emotional high before it becomes apparent and unseemly. He genuinely cannot remember the last time he’d had this much attention from people he actually truly _loves_, and it turns out he’s as good at processing it now as he was thirty years ago. 

He chugs the last of his coffee and ditches the mug on the bench. His hands are shaking ever so slightly, and he takes in a deep, calming breath that does jack shit to stop the giddy pounding of his pulse. 

_This is your life now_, Richie thinks, as if trying out the thought. _This can be your life. Your friends - your family - visiting on the weekends, and Eddie alive and smiling at you like you’re kids all over again_. 

It feels like a lie. It feels too good to be true. Richie does not know how he’s supposed to believe this when everything he’s ever experienced has taught him otherwise. 

Behind him comes the sound of Eddie’s bare feet padding back into the kitchen, and Richie hurries to look busy, scraping the last of Bill-Eddie’s toast into the trash, rinsing the crumbs from the plate even though his dishwasher is sitting forlornly two inches to his right. 

“Need a hand?” Eddie asks. 

Richie sets the dish down in the sink. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s not exactly urgent.” 

He turns around in time to see Eddie’s face crinkle into a look of disgust. “You’re not just going to leave the dishes there, are you? You look like you haven’t washed things in a week.” 

“I don’t see why not.” 

Eddie sighs, snagging Richie’s empty coffee cup off the bench as he passes it by on the way to the sink. He sets it aside, rolls up his sleeves, and asks, “Where’s the plug?”

Richie is so distracted watching Eddie’s forearms that he misses the question. “What?” 

“The plug, Richie,” Eddie repeats impatiently. “For the sink?” 

“Oh. In the cupboard. You know I have a dishwasher, right?” Eddie bends down to the cupboard Richie gestured to, and Richie does his best not to stare at his ass. His best isn’t very good. “It’s a wonderful modern invention, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it yet, but -.” 

“Do you know how inefficient dishwashers are?” Eddie says, in his ‘_yes, Richie, eating dirt is absolutely repulsive’ _voice that Richie first became fond of at age ten. “You might as well not wash them at all. Or eat off the damned floor.” 

Richie is sure he has an appropriately witty comeback for that, but when Eddie fills the sink, dropping the breakfast dishes beneath the bubbling soap, it escapes him entirely. It’s just - it’s too domestic. Too close to daydreams that Richie had never even given himself permission to have. 

“Here,” Eddie says, and Richie realizes he’s passing him a plate, soapy and dripping. Richie stares and Eddie raises a brow at him. “I’m not doing this all my own, asshole. This is your own damn house.” 

Richie takes it on autopilot. They stand there quietly, Eddie washing dishes and passing them to Richie who dries them and neatly stacks them aside. He doesn’t think he’s done this in _years_. Possible decades. Washing dishes like this, he means, because he’s absolutely fucking never done something so casually intimate with another person, that’s for sure. 

Eddie hums a little under his breath as he scrubs, relaxing into the familiarity of it. Richie’s glad at least one of them finds this comfortable. Richie’s fingers are shaking a little, and he’s terrified that Eddie’s going to notice each time their fingertips brush, but if he does, he doesn’t say anything.

It takes no time at all. It takes all the time in the world. Whatever it is, by the end when Richie’s drying off the last plate he’s almost dazed, feeling three steps behind his body; he watches as his hands calmly stack the plate atop the teetering pile. 

Beside him, Eddie says, “Was that really so hard?” 

It’s faintly condescending, the perfect ammunition to pick a fight. Richie can practically taste the words on his tongue - _not as hard as your mom makes me - _but he can’t make himself say them. They die a lonely, unappreciated death on the tip of his tongue. 

“Richie?” 

Richie looks up. Eddie’s frowning at him, warm brown eyes trying to chase out whatever thoughts have robbed Richie of his unstoppable trash talk. Richie wishes Eddie the utmost luck in finding what he’s looking for, because Richie himself has no fucking clue either. He says, “I’m fine, Eds.” 

Eddie’s silent for a moment. He turns back to the sink, plucking the plug with his long, delicate fingers. Even as kids, Richie used to stare at his hands; doing mental gymnastics to picture what they would look like cupped in his own. He doesn’t need to picture that anymore; he’s lived it. The thought is enough to make the back of his neck hot. 

The water rushes down the drain with a gurgle and Eddie says, “I need to go shopping.” 

“What?” 

Eddie takes the dish towel from Richie’s slack grip, drying his hands. “I can’t just keep wearing your clothes, Rich.” Richie strongly disagrees. “Besides, you’ve got like half a carton of expired milk in the fridge and that’s about it. Don’t you know how to feed yourself?” 

“Well, I _did _have bread, but it seems like some vultures swooped in and ate the last of it the moment I took my eyes off them like the trusting fool I am.” 

Eddie’s smile is small but bright. A lot like him, really. Richie generously does not permit himself to feel sappy for having such a stupid thought. “Well, maybe if you didn’t sleep in until noon Bill would have made you toast too.” 

“Bill? _You’re _not even going to feed me after all I’ve done for you?” 

Eddie throws the dish towel in his face and by the time Richie scrabbles to catch it, Eddie’s already halfway out of the kitchen. “C’mon,” Eddie says. “If we leave soon, we can miss the peak hour traffic.” 

Richie knows it probably says a lot about how whipped he is that he’s barely an inch behind Eddie’s heels. 

.

Richie takes Eddie to the nearest shopping center, fulling expecting him to complain the whole time about how dirty it is, how many of the common people are probably walking disease incubators waiting to infect them all. He expects Eddie to take charge, make Richie drive half an hour out of his way just so that they can go to the kind of specialty shops Richie imagines Eddie frequents. 

He does not. He sits in the passenger seat, critiquing Richie’s driving, his ostentatious car, but not much else. Richie wonders if there will come a time where Eddie stops surprising him. He sincerely doubts it. 

In the store, Richie pushes the cart between aisles, down his best to reach out and throw in the ugliest items he can see as they as they pass them, only for Eddie to dutifully put them back on the racks without so much as blinking. The shirt that says ‘Ask Me How I Make My Money At Home’ in shiny red sequins is exchanged for a light blue polo shirt, and the oversized moccasins traded for a pair of sensible loafers. 

“I swear,” Eddie huffs as he snatches a bright pink bathroom out of Richie’s hands. “It’s like shopping with a fucking _child.”_

Somehow the matching Hawaiian shirts Richie sneaks beneath Eddie’s fancy sports coat goes unnoticed. Richie’s heart is full to bursting. He can’t stop smiling. 

“What are you laughing at?” Eddie asks, looking up from where he’s weighing up two different jars of multivitamins for the better part of five minutes. 

“Nothing, nothing,” Richie says. “Just thinking about long it’s been since you probably set foot on such lowly ground.” 

Eddie snorts. “You mean Walmart?” 

Richie’s grin widens. “Tell me I’m wrong. When was the last time you shopped anywhere that didn’t proclaim to be homegrown, organic, and pesticide free. I bet all the vegan shops in your neighborhood got together and threw a party the day you moved in. You, Eddie Kaspbrak, probably singlehandedly keep the entire industry afloat.” 

“I’m a germaphobe not a vegan, Rich. They’re kind of completely different fucking things.” 

Richie leans over the cart and plucks one of the vitamins from Eddie’s hand, tossing it to be lost amongst the haul of dark wash jeans and pastel polos. “Vegan adjacent. And c’mon, we’ve been here for like an hour, Eds. It’s time to go home.” 

“I wasn’t done looking at those!” 

“It’s the most expensive one. It’s gotta be the best.” 

“You _know _that’s not how life fucking works.” 

“And _you _know that I don’t know shit,” Richie says cheerfully. Before Eddie can get distracted by fucking iron supplements or something, Richie begins pushing the cart away. Eddie has to scurry to catch up with him. “Besides, you earn the big bucks now, don’t you? You just came back from the dead, _live _a little! Splurge!” 

A passing shopper gives Richie a deeply unnerved glance but Eddie smiles at them awkwardly and hustles Richie along with a hand on his lower back. Richie immediately slows his step, leaning into it greedily. 

“That’s not funny,” Eddie says sternly, but Richie can tell he’s not genuinely upset. The hand on his back falls away and Richie misses it keenly and instantly. “Besides, it’s only a matter of time before Myra notices money coming out of the account. Then I’m fucked.” 

Because Richie is a selfish person he doesn’t say _‘maybe you should talk to her’ _or _‘communication is, supposedly, healthy in a marriage’. _Whatever Eddie’s reasons are for putting off that reunion, Richie doesn’t want to push him to reconsider. Every day that Eddie continues to exist in his general proximity is one that Richie refuses to take for granted - hoards them like a dragon hoards wealth. 

At the checkout, Eddie sighs when the Hawaiian shirts are unveiled, and Richie smiles so broadly that the cashier won’t meet his eyes. 

“I’m not wearing that,” Eddie says. 

“Sure, Eds.” Richie gives a theatrical wink.

“No. Stop winking. I’m not wearing it.” 

“I understand. You’re not wearing it. I hear you.” Richie winks again. “Perfectly clear.” 

Eddie sighs again as he pulls out the shiny new bank card he’d had to talk the bank into issuing him, but he’s trying not to smile so Richie considers it a victory. “Sorry about him,” Eddie says to their cashier. “He wasn’t hugged enough as a child and now he has a chronic inability to cope with not being the center of attention at all times.” 

The cashier finally looks up from the jar of pickles he’s scanning and seems to notice Richie properly for the first time. “Aren’t you that comedian guy? On Netflix?” 

“Listen, there are a lot of middle-aged, mediocre white guy comedians on Netflix right now. So far as I know, you could be asking if I’m Jim Jefferies or John Mulaney - in which case, I would be very flattered.” 

The cashier stares. 

“Yes,” Richie says. “I’m that comedian on Netflix.” 

“Here,” Eddie says, brandishing his card again to spare them all. “I’m ready to pay now.” 

“That’ll be eighty-six-fifty,” says their cashier.

Eddie swipes his card. The machine gives a very sorry sounding beep. 

“Sorry, man. Declined.” 

“Can I try again?” Eddie asks in the voice of somebody who knows the mountain they’re climbing is one loose rock away from collapsing but determined to keep going.

“Sure. Try again.” 

Eddie does try again. It declines. 

“Well,” Eddie says, resigned, “I guess Myra noticed the new card after all.” 

He sounds so unsurprised, so disheartened, that Richie barely thinks before whipping out his own card. “It’s cool, I got you, Eds.” 

“Richie, no. I’m not going to ask you to -.” 

“Too late,” Richie says, swiping his card before the cashier makes the mistake of listening to Eddie. “Besides, you didn’t ask me to do shit, I made the oh-so-tragic sacrifice on my own, because I’m just a real stand up guy.” 

“Richie.” Eddie’s face is pinched, his brows tight. It’s the look he gets when he’s about to start arguing - really arguing, not the fun half-mad half-not banter that’s their bread and butter. It’s kind of a relief to see that it’s an expression that hasn’t changed even after all this time, but Richie makes the snap judgement that Walmart is probably not really where Eddie, ideally, wants to have his inevitable meltdown. 

“Look,” Richie says, tucking his card back into his wallet. “You can pay me back if it matters that much to you. You can pay for anything you want when you’re Kaspbrak again and not Kaspbroke.” 

“You’re not funny,” Eddie says after a lengthy pause, but his shoulders unclench and Richie thinks the threat of the storm has passed. 

“What? Of course I’m funny, ask this guy.” He gestures to their cashier. “Haven’t you heard? I have my own Netflix special.” 

Eddie gives him a look dry enough to put any number of deserts to shame and reaches out to grab their bags. There’s a line forming behind them and Richie is conscious of the fact that their back and forth bickering has become, as it tends to, a show. Richie’s never minded it, but Eddie can get embarrassed when he realizes, and Richie’s in far too good of a mood to let that happen. 

“Let’s go, Eds,” he says, stealing the heaviest of the bags right from Eddie’s hands before he can protest. 

Eddie follows Richie back out to the car with only minimal bitching, a resounding chorus of, “I’m not made of glass, I can carry the damn groceries, Richie.” 

“I know you can,” Richie says, packing them into the miniscule trunk space. When he’d bought this car, he had not anticipated going shopping with Edward Kaspbrak, and it really showed. “But you’re also vaguely undead, so you have an excuse to get out of all the crappy chores for a while. You should be milking it for all its worth. I know I would.” 

Richie shuts the trunk and turns around, only to be thrown by how unexpectedly close Eddie’s standing. The toes of his spotless sneakers are a bare inch away from Richie’s ratty converse. 

“I’m not undead,” Eddie says. “You’re the one who said I seemed the same as always.” 

“Did I say that?” Richie asks, scrambling for something to cover up how flustered he is by Eddie’s encroaching proximity. “That doesn’t sound like me - missing a chance to make fun of you like that.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, dramatic and yet unoffended, and steps away. Richie tries to be discreet about the way he slumps in relief, his sweaty palms pressed against the side of the car to keep himself upright. 

Richie’s forty. It should be illegal to still be sent reeling like this by something as simple as a cute boy in his space. 

“Come on, Richie,” Eddie calls from the car. “If you’re not here in the next thirty seconds, I’m driving.”

.

That night they make dinner together, bickering in front of the stove as Richie uselessly gets in the way while Eddie whisks together something spicy and warm. It's delicious, easily the best thing Richie’s eaten in the past month, and he doesn’t hesitate to go back for seconds, for thirds. 

(logically, Richie knows this is because every single damn thing he’s eaten since Eddie died has gone to ash in his mouth, but he really doesn’t care. Besides, the way Eddie’s face turns beet red when he praises him is worth the tiny lie of omission.) 

Richie washes the dishes while Eddie showers, and afterwards they watch mindless television, arguing over the remote, and then arguing some more as they flip between their respective channels, only ever seeming to catch commercial breaks. 

Eddie sits with his legs folded and tucked neatly beneath him, heels pressed softly against Richie’s thigh. Richie sits straight backed, hands clamped over his knees to stop himself from doing something stupid. 

Eventually, Eddie begins to yawn, wide and soft, hair falling into his face and eyes half-lidded. He laughs at all of Richie’s dumb jokes, even the ones that aren’t that funny, and that’s how Richie knows he really is about to fall asleep where he’s sitting. 

Richie turns off the TV. They say goodnight - Eddie mumbling it into Richie’s shoulder as he gets to his feet, hand sweeping over the top of Richie’s as he goes - and then they go to bed. 

Separately. 

Richie lays in his bed, conscious again of how fucking _massive _it seems now that it’s just him in between the sheets again. One of the pillows is still on the floor from where Bill must have accidentally elbowed it off the mattress, and Richie can feel the ghost of Eddie’s hand against the soft part of his stomach where he’d laid his palm before drifting to sleep. 

It’s been a whole fucking day and Eddie is still here - Eddie is still _alive_. Richie is starting to consider that maybe, just maybe, he might not be hallucinating things after all; that the universe has, after a month of consideration, truly decided to give Eddie back to him. 

_What the fuck? _Richie thinks, and it’s only ever so slightly hysterical. _What the ever loving fuck? _

It’s possible god saw how useless Richie was in a world that did not have Eddie in it, and it’s possible that god just decided that after everything Richie and the others had been through, taking Eddie was just too cruel after all. A lot of things were possible, really, now that Eddie had proven not even death was finite. 

Is it really okay to believe in this? Is it really okay to just - hope? To think that, _for once, _things might just be okay? Better than okay even - amazing and great and everything Richie never knew he was waiting for. 

It doesn’t feel like it should be, but Richie’s always been a betting kind of man and he’s got nothing left to lose at this point. 

Under Richie’s careful, hawk-like supervision the week crawls by. 

Eddie is in the kitchen when he wakes, radio playing as he butters the both of them toast and staunchly refuses to make coffee the way Richie prefers to take it. Richie is still avoiding his agent’s calls, so they spend their days puttering around each other, experimenting with frequent trips further and further into the city where Eddie once again surprises Richie by complaining about LA virtually not at all. 

He says something at one point, and Eddie gives him a dry look. “What exactly do you think New York is like, Rich? It’s pretty much exactly the same thing except I’m less likely to run over a celebrity when they jay walk like a fucking idiot.” 

Richie, admittedly, does not have a comeback for that. He’s been to New York, at least he’s pretty sure he has, but the last twenty-seven years of his life are more a haze than a reality, and the details sometimes blur when he reaches for them, fingers smudging wet paint. It’s like his years in Derry and the rest of his life have flipped, inverted so that Richie can no longer entirely tell what is supposed to be real to him and what’s not. 

Richie doesn’t think he really minds, truthfully. 

The day before the Losers are due to arrive, Eddie deep cleans Richie’s whole damn house. They’d had a late night catching up on the crappy reality TV Eddie had fallen behind on during what Richie has taken to referring to as his ‘_brief convalescence among the dirt’,_ and when Richie crawls out of bed sometime after noon it’s to find Eddie on his hands and knees in the bathroom, scrubbing the grout with a spare toothbrush. 

“Huh,” Richie says, leaning in the doorway and scratching sleepily at his chest. “Is this like… an undead nesting thing?” 

The look Eddie gives him is venomous enough to put a viper to shame. “No, dipshit, it’s an ‘I don’t want to live in filth’ thing.” 

“Filth? That’s a bit harsh, Eds.” 

“Richie, I found mold growing behind the tub.” 

“Well, where else were you expecting it to grow? It’s doing its best.” 

Eddie throws the toothbrush back into the bucket of soapy water by his knees and places his hands on his hips. He’s wearing bright pink dishwashing gloves and Richie has no clue at all where they came from because he doesn’t remember buying them. “Do you want all our friends to take one look at your house and run away? Because it sort of seems like you do.” 

Richie snorts, pushing off from the door and wandering into the room. He does his best to keep the dry side of the tiles. “Eduardo, I promise you that none of our friends are going to get down on their hands and knees to make sure I’ve kept the bathroom tiles absolutely flawless in their absence.” 

“If you think I’m just cleaning the bathroom then you’re in for a rude awakening,” Eddie says. 

“Eds, c’mon, the house is fine.” 

Eddie bends back over and resumes his work on the floor. Richie shuffles to the side for a better view of his ass. He refuses to feel guilty about that. He thinks a monk might be tempted to stand here and stare if he’d had the same opportunity. “You can get a start on the kitchen.” 

“What?” 

Eddie looks back up and Richie barely manages to glance away in time. He does his best to keep his face blank. “The kitchen, Richie,” Eddie says. 

“The kitchen,” Richie repeats. “Right.” 

Eddie stares at him skeptically. “You do know how to clean, right?” 

Richie rolls his eyes, bending down to raid Eddie’s little dragon nest of cleaning supplies. “I know that this might come as a shock to you, but I’m forty years old actually so yes, I do know how to clean my own damn house.” 

“Excellent.” Eddie’s attention is fixed on the grout again. “Once you’re done that, we can tackle the garage together.” 

“Whatever ‘filth’ is in my garage, I don’t think our friends are going to stumble across it.” 

“But _I’ll _know it’s there.” 

Richie throws his hands up, retreating. “God, you’re a terror. You’d think you’d been murdered by Mr. Clean instead of an alien clown.” 

“You’re still not funny!” Eddie’s voice rings out, following Richie down the hall. “And make sure you clean inside the oven!” 

Richie does. It’s absolutely miserable work, and he keeps up a running commentary of complaints the whole time, singing them back down to the bathroom until Eddie finally decides the grout is appropriately shiny and comes to help him. After that, Richie has to admit that things aren’t so awful.

They clean the kitchen, and then the garage, and once that’s done Eddie demands they run all of the spare sheets through the wash despite the fact Richie insists that the only spare sheets that have been used recently are the ones on Eddie’s damn bed. 

“Good. We can wash those too,” Eddie says, stripping them off and piling them on the floor with a quick professionalism that is kind of a little bit sexy. 

“You’ve been sleeping on them for less than a week, Eds. Even you can’t be that germaphobic.” 

Eddie frowns at Richie as he wiggles a pillow free of its case. “We have four friends coming and only two spare guest rooms.” 

“Yeah, so?” 

“So,” Eddie says, with no trace of patience in his voice at all, “I assumed Ben and Bev would be in one room and Mike and Bill could have the other. I know we proved that these beds could fit three of us, but it’s not exactly what I’d call comfortable.” 

Richie stares at him. “But… where will you sleep?” 

Eddie looks at him like he’s fucking dumb. “With you, idiot.” 

Once, Richie would have said he thought he was a reasonably intelligent person. Not exactly rocket scientist material, but, you know, functionally smart on a day to day level. He does not feel like that person right now. It’s nice to know that even after nearly thirty years Eddie Kaspbrak can still make him feel like a stupid teenager with barely any effort at all. 

“Oh,” Richie says. 

Eddie throws the dirty sheets in his face. 

That night Eddie sleeps in his bed for the first time since he showed up on his doorstep. After going to all the trouble to tidy up the guest’s room for the incoming guests, Eddie had said it didn’t make any sense to ruin their hard work by messing it all up again. Richie agrees because he’s a pushover and also he’s dumb but not dumb enough to miss the opportunity to have the object of his affections in his bed. 

In less than twelve hours, the Losers will be all together again for the first time since Derry. Despite Richie’s selfish desire to hog Eddie’s attention, even he has to admit he’s practically dying of anticipation. Richie has never felt as complete as he does when he’s with the others. Even in his own life, in the yawning, wasted years, he’s always been an outsider; unable to ever find a place he could jam his crooked, awkward edges into and expect to fit. 

It’s fucking stupid, he knows, how easily things had come back to him in Derry as they sat in the restaurant, laughing themselves to tears, pulling at each other’s sleeves for attention like children and making a general nuisance of themselves in a way totally unbecoming of successful adults. He’d thought it then, and he thinks it now; of course he’d never found any place to fit, because the one place he belonged was simply waiting for him to come back home. 

There’s the sound of the sheets rustling and Eddie says, “You’re still awake.” 

“So are you,” Richie says. “You can’t get mad at me, you hypocrite.” 

Eddie snorts. Richie can’t see him in the dark bedroom, but just the general shape of him lying beside Richie on the mattress fills his heart with all kinds of warmth. “You’ve gotta drive to the airport tomorrow to pick Ben and Bev up. If you’re too exhausted, I’m driving.” 

“Oh, fuck no you’re not. What are we going to do if you get pulled over?” Richie pitches his voice higher in what he thinks is a perfect imitation of Eddie. “_Oh, no, officer. I don’t have any ID with me. You see, I’m actually recently un-deceased and I haven’t gotten around to sorting out the paperwork for that yet.” _

Eddie swats at his arm. “I wouldn’t get pulled over. I’m a good driver.” 

“If you’re anything like you are in the passenger seat behind the wheel I’m not sure I wanna see it. I don’t know how you get so much road rage when you’re not even fucking _driving_.” 

“Maybe if everybody in LA actually knew how to drive instead of taking up valuable road space the rest of us could be using.” 

“You cannot convince me that New York is any better.”

He can feel Eddie roll over beside him, their shoulders knocking. “You’re not awake thinking about LA traffic.” 

“I’m not awake thinking of anything. I’m never thinking of anything. I’m an empty husk of a person. I’ve never had a thought, ever, in my life.” 

“I’d believe that,” Eddie says. “It’d explain so much.” 

Despite himself, Richie smiles. He knows Eddie won’t press him, not right now, but Richie’s feeling strangely okay, so he says, “Are you anxious about tomorrow?” 

Eddie makes a humming noise beneath his breath. “About the others?” 

“It’s been a while since you saw them. And last time the circumstances weren’t exactly, uh, ideal.” 

A strange thoughtful quiet lingers for a moment. “I’m not anxious, exactly.” 

“Then what was all the stress cleaning about?” 

“It wasn’t stress cleaning, Richie. It was just _cleaning_. Normal people tend to clean before they have people over, you know that right?” 

“Clean, sure. Organize my record collection in alphabetical order and vacuum the fucking garage? Not so much.” 

Eddie breathes out heavily. Richie can feel the heat of it through his shirt, and he bites back on the urge to shuffle closer. It’s an urge he’s been biting back for longer than he has the desire to count. 

“Not anxious,” Eddie says again. “Just, I don’t know, nervous, I guess. That’s normal, isn’t it? It’s been a hell of a lot longer for me than it has been for you.” 

Feeling brave, Richie reaches out, fumbling in the sheets until his palm collides with Eddie’s. He takes his sweaty hand, squeezing tightly. “I already told you it was. You don’t need to justify yourself to me. You can be as nervous as you want, but you know that there’s nothing to really be nervous _about,_ yeah?” 

“I didn’t say it was rational,” Eddie says petulantly. 

Richie grins. “C’mon,” he says. “Let’s sleep, and then we can fight over who gets to drive to the airport tomorrow. I bet half an hour in LA traffic will convince you that you never should have asked to begin with.” 

Eddie snorts, rolling over to his side. “I’ll bet I’m still a better driver than you.” 

“Maybe,” Richie says. “If you promise to get some sleep tonight, maybe I’ll even let you prove it.” 

.

They get to the airport an hour before Ben and Beverly’s flight is due in because Eddie could not be convinced to spend a second longer waiting than was absolutely necessary. Mike had been picked up Bill already the night prior, and there’s a good chance the both of them will already be at the house by the time they got back. Richie had very nicely left a spare key underneath the mat for them rather than make them sit on the porch.

Airport coffee is just as bad as Richie remembers, and he’s just tossed the remnants of his second cup in the nearest bin when he hears it - a loud, piercing whistle that sounds through the airport followed by a laugh so incredibly joyous that it could raise the dead if the dead hadn’t already raised himself. 

“What the…?” Eddie turns to follow the sound, and Richie barely manages to step out of the way in time as five-foot-four of red hair and excitement barrels right into Eddie’s chest, knocking him several steps back. Beverly’s bag hits the floor but she doesn’t seem to notice, her arms wrapped tight around Eddie’s shoulders and her face buried in his neck. 

“Eddie! Oh my god! It’s you - it’s really you!” 

“Uh, hi, Bev. Yeah it’s - it’s me.” Richie can see Eddie’s hands hover uncertainly over her back for a moment before he seems to realize that he can actually touch her. Gingerly, he sets them on her waist, and then a moment later returns her hug fiercely. “God, it’s good to see you again.” 

Beverly gives a watery laugh. She pulls back, dabbing at her running makeup with her knuckles. “Good to see _me? _Eddie, I can’t even tell you how god it is to see _you.” _

Eddie grins at her, sheepish, hands tucked self-consciously in his pockets. “Where’s Ben?” 

“Right here.” Ben stoops to pick up Beverly’s dropped bag, slinging it over his shoulder. He smiles at Eddie, eyes raking him up and down, taking him all in. The soft smile on his face is unbearably tender. “Hi, Eddie.” 

Eddie obligingly holds his arms open and Ben steps forward, gently wrapping his arms around Eddie’s shoulder. He’s far more careful than Beverly but no less adoring. Richie can tell that he’s scared of hurting him, because it’s a fear Richie himself had nursed all throughout those first few days, as if one wrong touch would send Eddie splintering back into pieces. “You’re looking good.” 

“Well, you know,” Eddie says as they part. “I’m not dead, so that’s a good start.” 

Ben laughs. “I’d say it’s a phenomenal start.” 

Richie can’t stand to stay quiet for a second later. His self-control is only so strong. He clears his throat pointedly and says, “What? Am I just the chauffeur now?”

Beverly swoops on him immediately. She smells like expensive, subtle perfume and strawberry shampoo. Richie buries his face in her hair for a moment, enjoying it desperately. She smells like how home feels. “Hi, Rich. Thanks for picking us up. And also for looking after Eddie.” 

“Well,” Richie says as she steps aside so Ben can pull him into a warm, manly hug. “I figured if I just waited for you guys to show up, you’d be able to take him off my hands. It’s been hard, but I stayed strong. There was light at the end of the tunnel and it was the sleep deprived passengers of flight 1029.” 

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie says, pinching Richie in the side. To Beverly and Ben, he says, “Come on. Bill and Mike should be there by the time we get back.” 

“Does Bill get a key now?” Beverly asks, amused. 

“I figured now that I remember my best friend lives, like, an hour away from me I could probably afford to give out a spare key.” 

“Nobody else has one?” Ben asks. 

“Well, my manager does, technically,” Richie says. “But that’s part of my contract so there wasn’t anything I could do about that.” 

“That doesn’t sound like a legally binding clause to put in an employment contract.” Ben frowns. 

“Yeah, well…” Richie deeply does not want to talk about the time in his career when it was not unheard of for him to miss shows and skip deadlines because he was drunk or high, collapsed somewhere in his house with very little chance of somebody stumbling upon him. It’d been a long time since then, but Richie’s manager had stuck by him through it and if the only thing he asked for to grant him some peace of mind was a key to Richie’s house, then it was comparatively a small price to pay. “You win some you lose some.” 

Beverly and Ben exchange a confused look, but the expression on Eddie’s face is just a touch too knowing. Richie doesn’t know whether that’s because Eddie just _knows _him or because he’s made an outdated but probably not unfair assumption due to the amount of empty liquor bottles they’d had to throw away just yesterday. Either way, Richie coughs and says, far too loudly, “So! How was your flight?” 

The drive back to his house goes as smooth as it can possibly go with Eddie behind the wheel. Beverly sits up the front with Eddie, relegating Ben and Richie to the back, but it hardly seems to matter, because the four of them are a mess, leaning all over one another, clutching at seatbacks and shoulders, and just generally being the kind of unsafe road hazard that would have given Richie’s mother a heart attack back when he was learning to drive. 

Eddie, to his credit, is exactly as good of a driver as he’d claimed to be and barely flinches at any of their antics, even when he snaps at them to _sit down and stop yelling before I run us off the fucking road, you idiots! _

(Richie notices that Beverly keeps one hand on Eddie’s knee the whole drive. He is searingly jealous, not because he resents her for it, but because he wishes he had the easy courage to be able to do the same. He can understand the crushing need to be reassured that Eddie is still there - _he’s still alive.) _

They get to the house more or less in one piece, and when Richie throws open the door Mike immediately barrels past him, arms around Eddie’s shoulders, practically lifting him off the ground with the strength of his enthusiasm. 

“Hi, Mike,” Eddie wheezes, although it is absolutely a loving wheeze. 

“Eddie - god. It’s you. I mean, I knew it would be, but you’re really here.” Mike’s voice sounds suspiciously like he’s crying and Richie sends Bill a raised brow over his shoulder. Bill smirks and shrugs, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. 

“Yeah, it’s me.” Eddie pats Mike’s back. “Sorry, Mike. You’re kind of crushing me,” he says, but he doesn’t sound upset in the least and makes no move to draw back. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Mike gives one last squeeze before stepping away. The way he wipes at his eyes is far less subtle than Beverly had managed back at the airport. “I didn’t hurt you, did you?” 

Eddie sighs loudly. “I don’t know how many times I need to tell you people that I’m not made of glass.” 

Ben gently slips past him into the house, hand brushing Eddie’s elbow. “You’ll probably have to repeat it a few more times,” he says. “We’re going to be a little over protective for a while, I think.” 

“I can promise you, he’s not going to break,” Richie says. “He’s still just as much of a little shit as always.” 

“Hey, fuck you,” Eddie says, flipping him off. 

Ben smiles. “Is there somewhere I can put these bags down?” 

“Oh, yeah sure.” Richie snags one of the bags from Ben’s shoulder even as he protests. Despite what Eddie might say, he _is _capable of being a good fucking host. “C’mon, pretty boy, I’ll show you to your room.”

The others congregate towards the kitchen, crowding around Eddie like over eager children, and Richie can’t help but smile as they vanish out of sight. He takes Ben down the hall to the second guest room, the one with a desk shoved in the corner and an overflowing bookshelf. Richie had always intended to turn it into an office, but he did his best work sitting on the couch with the TV on low and a beer at his elbow, and he’d just never found the energy to play at professionalism. These days, the room is mostly used for gathering dust. Or it had been before Eddie had descended on it like a whirlwind. 

“Here we go,” Richie says, dropping Beverly’s bag at the foot of the bed. “Finest room in the house.” 

“Thanks,” Ben says, setting down his own luggage, grinning faintly. “Do I owe you a tip now?” 

“We’re a _classy _establishment here, haystack. Can’t have you going around blatantly propositioning the staff like that.” 

Ben laughs and Richie can’t help but preen. He loves all the Losers with an indescribable enthusiasm, but other than Eddie, Ben was always the way he’d loved to make laugh the most. He was just so fucking _shy; _quiet and reserved even when he was at his most open. Richie had always liked being able to chip away at that with dumb jokes and stupid voices. 

“It _is _a classy establishment,” Ben says, glancing around. “Cleaner than I would have thought for the guy who used to leave half-empty cereal bowls all around his room.” 

“Benjamin, I was a _child.” _

_“Richard, _I remember finding cheerios underneath your bed during your eighteenth birthday party.” 

Richie can’t help but grin. “Yeah. Eddie gave me hell for that. Refused to sleep in my room that night unless I cleaned the whole thing up, you remember that?” 

“I remember you in your underwear trying to cram a month’s worth of trash into your closet at 3am so that Eddie wouldn’t sleep on the couch, yeah.” 

Richie laughs. He can’t help it. “God, I can’t believe I ever forgot that. What the fuck, right? That’s the kind of memory that should embarrass you every time you close your eyes for ten years.” 

The crinkles at the corner of Ben’s eyes show all the years Richie hasn’t been there to make him laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s… you ever think about that?” 

Richie considers playing dumb, but he just doesn’t have it in him. “About how we spent most of our lives never remembering the best parts? Yeah, Ben. I think about it all the fucking time.” 

Ben’s smile this time is more subdued, more downright _sad._ Kind of abruptly, Richie remembers Ben in the cistern, yearbook page in hand, saying _“I couldn’t forget because I kept it in my wallet for twenty-seven years.” _The others, they’ve all lost their lives to this mess too, lost each other to It, but Ben is probably the only other person that really knows what it feels like to have a gaping hole where your heart ought to be and not know _why. _Pining when you don’t even realize you’re fucking pining is a hell of a thing. 

They stand silently for a moment, staring at one another. Laughter drifts down the hall from the kitchen, soft and warm, and on the tail end of it is Eddie’s voice, loud and high as he pitches a fit over god knows what. Quietly, Ben says, “Did you want to talk about it?” 

Maybe. Yes. No. Richie doesn’t fucking know. He gives Ben a grin he hopes isn’t as shaky as he feels. “Ben, do I look like a man who copes with his feelings by talking about them?” 

“Maybe you should be,” Ben says. “I think… I think it helps.” 

“Maybe,” Richie says. “But just - I can’t. Not right now.” 

Ben’s eyes are so endearingly understanding that Richie thinks it’s a wonder he went into something as soul-sucking as architecture instead of becoming a fucking preschool teacher or something. Richie braces himself, preparing to withstand a chorus of _‘are you sure? That can’t be healthy, Rich. I’m here if you need me.’ _

Instead, Ben says, voice kind, “Let’s go find the others.” 

Not for the first time and absolutely not for the last time, Richie loves his friends with a fervency that borders on utter devotion. 

.

The Losers are staying at Richie’s for two days, leaving bright and early Monday morning, and if Richie had ever thought for a moment that there might be a responsible adult among them he’s quickly proven that just because people grow old does not mean they grow _up. _

“Jesus, Rich. The water’s _freezing_ \- you ever hear of heating?” 

“Hey!” Rich points at Beverly with the bottle of tequila he’s currently trying to pour into an assortment of glasses. There’s music playing from someone’s phone hooked up to a cheap, portable speaker, and Richie has recognized every single fucking song as an homage to their childhood. “Nobody is _making _you swim around in your panties, Marsh. Do you know how much pool heating costs?” 

Beverly slicks her hair back from her face, one elbow on the edge of the pool. She looks over Richie’s modest but not inexpensive LA house slowly. “Yeah, because it definitely seems like you can’t afford it.” 

“That’s it,” Richie says, screwing the top back on the bottle and setting aside one of the glasses. “Bev’s cut off until she learns not to insult both the homeowner and the bartender.” 

Beverly laughs; it’s loud, but also somehow shy, as if she’s still unused to being permitted anything louder than a faint whispering breath where somebody might hear her. Richie bites back on the quiet fury that hits him whenever he thinks about how she came to be that way, the asshole that taught her that her happiness wasn’t something to be shared. 

There’s a loud splash in the water, and then Ben’s arms are around her waist, dragging her down and under, and when they emerge in a spectacular tangle, Beverly’s breathless laughing is less self-conscious. 

“Ben!” She pushes playfully at Ben’s shoulders, squirming in his grip. “I was _talking_.” 

Ben’s grinning widely, white teeth flashing in the bright outdoor lights that eat away the late-night darkness. “Sorry, I thought I’d take you for a different kind of drink considering Richie cut you off.” 

“Please, nobody drown anybody,” Bill calls, amused, from where he’s sitting on the edge of the pool, legs kicking absently in the water. “I can only imagine the headlines.” 

Mike’s with Richie at the bar, and he says, voice somber, “World-renowned celebrities found murdered in the pool of mediocre comedian Richie Tozier: recently undead risk analyst, Edward Kaspbrak, declines comment.” 

Eddie flips him off from his spot sprawled in his deckchair, nursing a mostly empty glass of something that Richie doesn’t even remember making. He’s got a ratty old pair of Richie’s gym shorts on because he refused to swim in any of his own fancy clothing, and the matching Hawaiian shirt Richie had bought him unbuttoned to show off his surprisingly toned abs, and, if Richie looks hard enough, the splintering scar right over his ribs. 

He does not let himself look hard enough. He’s too distracted by the image Eddie presents anyway. All he’s missing is a pair of oversized sunglasses and you’d think he was relaxing on the beach instead of by Richie’s pool at 11pm at night. 

Richie makes himself look away. To Mike, he says, “Mediocre comedian? Sounds like somebody else is looking to get cut off too, Mikey boy.” 

Mike grins at him, face bright. “I’m pretty sure I could take you if it came to it. When was the last time you ate something more nutritious than the olives on pizza?” 

Eddie laughs loudly. “Yeah, fucking _get him, _Mike.” 

“I let you all into my home out of the graciousness of my heart, and this is how you thank me?” Richie shakes his head sadly, setting the bottle down. “For shame, all of you.” 

Offended, Bill says, “I’m on your side! I’ve been on my best behavior since I got here.” 

“At least somebody is. Thank you, Billiam.” Richie wanders past and offers him a fresh glass. “For your display of chivalry, you deserve a reward.” 

Before Bill can accept it, Ben’s hands snake out from the water, wrapping around his ankles. Bill is yanked unceremoniously into the pool, the battered old book he’d been reading goes flying. Richie watches, bemused, as Bill emerges spluttering and grinning, Beverly laughing hysterically in the background. 

“I was _reading.” _

“I noticed,” Ben says. “One of your own books, too. And we always thought Richie was the narcissistic one.” 

“That was all he had! That’s not my fault!” 

Richie takes that opportunity to wheel on the spot and make a beeline to Eddie before they can ask him why he has every single book Bill’s ever published despite the fact that Richie doesn’t actually consider reading to be a favored hobby of his. They’d understand, he knows, if he told them about how every time he passed a book by William Denbrough he’d pause and think _huh, why does that sound familiar? _

Collecting Bill’s works had been a compulsion it’d taken him until forty years old to finally fucking understand. The same way he’d sometimes watch fashion show reruns at three in the morning, distracted by the tiny red-headed designer sitting by the stage, or the way he had an entire comedy routine about bird watching. 

Eddie holds out his hand for Bill’s abandoned drink as Richie approaches, and Richie hands it to him, sinking down on the corner of his chair. “What drink are we on now, Eds?” 

“I haven’t had a proper drink in like thirty years, Richie, do you think maybe you could let me enjoy it for one night?” Eddie says, but it’s without bite. He nudges at Richie’s knee with his toes. “You know there’s a whole fucking empty chair beside me, right?” 

“But Eds, you know how much I love being close to you.” Richie flutters his eyelashes. “Your mom never seemed to mind, and you know, I figured, like mother like -.” 

“Beep beep, Richie,” Eddie sighs. “I don’t know why I ever thought the fact my mother was dead might get you to back off.” 

Richie grins smugly. “At this point, I think we all know that death is just a relative thing.” 

“I’m pretty sure I’m the exception, not the rule,” Eddie says, and it sounds like it should be a joke, but it comes out thoughtful, considering. Eddie’s thumb is rubbing at the side of his glass, and he’s looking out over the water, the pool lights turning it almost white. 

There’s a creak beside them and Richie looks up to see Mike settling on the spare chair. “I’ve been thinking about that too,” he says. 

Silence falls. The three in the pool are leaning against the side now, Bill’s sopping shirt clinging to his broad shoulders and Ben’s arm around Beverly’s waist. “Yeah,” Beverly says quietly. “I think we all have.” 

Richie’s heart sinks. He doesn't know if he has it in him to have this conversation right now. “Guys -.” 

“No,” Eddie says, cutting over him. “It’s fine. It’s… we should talk about it.”

“Eds, c’mon. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” 

Eddie barely seems to hear him. His thumb circles the rim of his glass. “Why do I get to come back,” Eddie says, “and not Stan?” 

So far, they’ve been doing a really good job at dodging the elephant in the room. Now, it feels crushing; sucking all of the air from around them, leaving Richie almost dizzy. The soft music playing from the speakers sounds like static. 

“Maybe it’s… maybe it’s about how you died, you know?” Beverly says softly. “Because It killed you.” 

“It killed Stan too,” Mike says sharply. “Just because he - it’s still the same. That was It.” 

“We know, Mike,” Ben says. “Nobody’s saying otherwise. You know that.” 

Quiet again. Richie can hear the soft sound of the pool water lapping at the edges. _Blood, _he thinks, remembering the sewers. _Why does it always sound like fucking blood? _

“I know we haven’t asked,” Mike says, “but what do you remember?” 

Eddie’s laugh sounds slightly jagged. He’s looking down at the glass in his hands now, and he’s not shaking, but the way he’s mouth is pressed white tells Richie he might as well be. “About dying? Well, I remember getting skewered through the chest. And then I remember…” 

Richie recalls like ice the way Eddie’s voice sounded as he said _‘it was like being alive, but worse’. _

Eddie sits up suddenly, startling Richie, and before he can ask what’s wrong, Eddie’s setting his fresh glass atop the side table, legs slinging over the side of the chair. Richie watches, eyes wide and mouth open, as Eddie gets to his feet and just… walks away. He disappears back into the house, leaving the lot of them staring after his retreating back.

They’re very quiet for a moment. Richie can hear the front door close. Eddie doesn’t slam it, and somehow that’s worse. He’s not upset at _them_ because if he was, they would fucking know. Whatever it is, Eddie’s upset with himself, with the world, with _life. _

The very concept of Eddie being upset at life when it’s something he only recently got back cuts Richie so deeply he feels like he should be bleeding. 

Ben says, voice uncertain, “Should we go after him?” 

“No,” Beverly and Mike say, perfectly in sync. Beverly looks grim and Mike just looks _sad. _Richie wishes everybody would fucking stop looking like that. He wishes that for once the lot of them could have an uncomplicated happiness that didn’t threaten to tip to misery on a moment’s notice. 

“I think if anybody should talk to him right now, it should be Richie,” Bill says. 

“What?” Richie turns to stare at him. “You don’t think he might want some space? He’s probably fucking… overwhelmed.” 

“Yeah, and since when has Eddie ever wanted to be _alone _when he’s overwhelmed?” Bill asks, but his voice is gentle. “You were always the one to talk him down from that stuff, Trashmouth.” 

Bill isn’t wrong. He rarely fucking is. That’s why he was their fearless leader, after all. 

Mike’s hand lands on his arm, a reassuring squeeze. “Tell him we’re sorry,” he says. “We shouldn’t have pushed. This is a lot, and he doesn’t have to talk about it until he’s ready. _If _he’s ever ready.” 

Richie manages to summon up a halfhearted grin. He pats the back of Mike’s hand as he gets to his feet. “I really don’t think it’s you he’s upset at,” he says. “I’m just… I’m gonna…” he gestures towards the house, and then, before anybody else can say something well-intentioned but upsetting, Richie retreats, chasing after the same thing he’s been chasing for the last thirty years straight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everybody who left absolutely lovely comments on the last chapter, and your patience while I was working on this one. I really don't have as much time to write these days as I'd ideally like, but I'm very in love with this universe and this fic and I promise you that it's not going anywhere. 
> 
> Once again, if you ever wanna talk about reddie or anything at all, find me on:   
twitter: @doingwritebyme  
tumblr: glenflower


	3. Chapter 3

Richie finds Eddie in the bathroom. It’d been the first place he’d looked. Amazing how after all this time, locking himself away in the one place usually guaranteed to give him privacy is still Eddie’s go to defense mechanism. 

Richie knocks lightly on the door. “Eds?” 

“I’m fine.” 

Eddie does not sound fine. Eddie sounds a lot like he’s struggling to fucking breathe, actually; voice whisper-quiet and words tripping on the way out. 

Richie tries the handle. It’s not locked and he hadn’t really expected it to be. “I hope you’re decent in there because I’m coming in. If you’ve got your dick out, now’s the time to tuck it away.” 

Eddie’s only response is a wheeze, which is how Richie knows Eddie’s probably not even listening to him. Eddie hates Richie’s dick jokes more than he hates the _your mom _jokes, which is saying something because Eddie hates the _your mom _jokes a _lot_. 

Concern mounting, Richie opens the door. Eddie’s sitting on the floor, back pressed against the tub and legs drawn up so he can wrap his arms around his knees. Richie can’t see his face, but his shoulders are heaving and each breath sounds shorter and shorter than the last.

_Oh hell, _Richie thinks.

“Hey, Eds. Hey.” He sinks to the floor in front of him, gently peeling Eddie’s arms out of the way. Eddie’s hands are sweaty in his grip, but he gives them a tight, reassuring squeeze - the physical reminder that Richie is right here and he doesn’t plan on going anywhere. “You gotta breathe.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie hisses. His nails are cutting crescents into the back of Richie’s hand. “I _know, _okay? I’m not a fucking idiot.” 

Richie wisely chooses to keep his mouth shut. Eddie takes in a long, deliberate breath, holds it, and lets it back out again. The hands Richie’s holding twitch, like Eddie’s struggling not to reach for an inhaler he doesn’t actually have. His next breath is easier, and then easier again after that. As far as panic attacks go, this one is a baby. Now that he can actually fucking remember high school, Richie can recall with crystal clarity sitting in dirty public bathrooms every other week, arm around Eddie’s shoulders as he shook with the force of his own fear. 

“Sorry,” Eddie says tightly after a long moment. 

“Sorry? For what?” Richie playfully rattles their joined hands. “I got to sit here and holds your hands for five minutes, so I think I’m coming out of this on top.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes and immediately detangles their grip. Richie lets him, if only because he knows that Eddie’s always kind of raw after an episode like this, and it’s best not to push at his boundaries until he has a chance to reinforce them. “You know for what,” Eddie says. “I shouldn’t have - that was uncalled for.” 

“I don’t really think this is the kind of thing that pencils itself into your calendar, Eds. It happens whenever it happens.” 

The set of Eddie’s jaw is firm and unyielding. He’s determined to beat himself up over this, Richie realizes, because Eddie has been determined to beat himself up over any perceived loss of control since he was thirteen fucking years old. “I shouldn’t have walked off like that.” 

“The others understand,” Richie says. “Nobody’s mad at you.” 

Eddie scowls. “Maybe they should be.” 

“Eddie,” Richie says with the utmost sincerity he can manage, “how many times do we have to tell you that we’re physically incapable of being mad at you for at least another week?” 

“You’re not helping,” Eddie says, but the way his shoulders are sinking says otherwise. “Can you just take this seriously?” 

“I am!” Richie insists. “You had a panic attack, so what? Do you wanna know how many panic attacks I’ve had since Derry? Because if we’re keeping score, than I’m absolutely obliterating you, it’s not even a contest.” 

Eddie’s scowl falls away. “You've been having panic attacks?” 

_Fuck. _“That’s not…” Eddie’s looking up at him, brown eyes narrowed and concerned, and Richie lets the building joke stutter and die before it even leaves him. “Yeah, of course I have been. Eddie, man - Derry, Pennywise, _all of it _\- that’s the kind of shit that would send anybody over the fucking edge. So yeah, I’ve been having some panic attacks every now and again.” 

“You didn’t tell me that,” Eddie says. 

“It didn’t come up,” Richie answers truthfully. “Besides, it’s not really been a problem since you’ve been back. A lot of it was, just…” Richie runs a hand through his hair, shoving awkwardly at his glasses as they begin to slide down his nose. “It’s just…” 

He doesn’t know how to talk about this. He’s discussed it with his therapist, and, on one truly awkward occasion, with Beverly, but other than that Richie’s had this shit on lockdown. It’s a harder habit to break than he’d thought it would be, and he’d never exactly thought it’d be easy. 

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Eddie says generously. 

“Oh, thank Christ,” Richie breathes out, relieved, and Eddie finally cracks a smile. 

The way Richie’s sitting is kind of killing his knees, so he crawls forward and plops himself down beside Eddie with a groan. He lets one of his hands fall to Eddie’s knee, giving it a friendly shake. The rim of the bathtub is cutting uncomfortably into his upper back, but he can’t bring himself to mind. Beside him, Eddie snorts. 

“You sound like an old man.” 

“Oh, excuse the fuck out of me. Some of us haven’t had the benevolent universe restore our bodies to us in peak physical condition.” 

“I don’t know if you’d consider the massive fucking scar across my chest ‘peak physical condition’, Rich.” 

Truthfully, Richie doesn't dislike the scar. What little of it he’s had a chance to see. He likes what it represents; the reminder that this isn’t just his wild imagination running off on him, that this isn’t just Richie going well and truly mad in his grief.

Richie says, “I wouldn’t worry about it, Spaghetti. It’d take more than that to ruin your devilish good looks.” 

“Spaghetti? Jesus, are we fucking thirteen again?” 

“Well, this summer has been equally as traumatizing so I wouldn’t be surprised.” 

Eddie actually laughs at that, head tilted back against the tub because he’s fucking tiny. “Considering that this time we killed it for real, hopefully we won’t be making this a tradition.” 

“God, I fucking hope not,” Richie says. “What was it you said? We’d be seventy years old next time?” 

“You forgot the part where I called you an asshole,” Eddie says. “Equally as important.” 

“It always is,” Richie agrees. 

They fall silent for a moment. Richie’s hand is still sitting on Eddie’s knee, but Eddie doesn’t seem bothered and Richie is not inclined to remove it. They’re too far into the house to really be able to hear their friends, but Richie imagines he does all the same, the echoes of their presence filling the bathroom with familiar warmth. 

It’s comforting, because reminders of the Losers are always comforting, but a greedy part of Richie he can never quite quash can’t help but be pleased to have this moment of just them; sitting on the floor Eddie has scrubbed like a prophet and shoulders brushing as they breathe. 

Only half joking, Richie says, “You wanna just ditch the party and stay here all night instead? We could sleep in the tub. Well, _you _could sleep in the tub because you’re approximately the size of a stunted child. I could keep you company on the bath mat. If we get hungry, I have some orange scented soap we could snack on.” 

Richie expects a witty comeback - _I don’t think even soap could fix you, Trashmouth - _but he receives nothing at all, not even a laugh. He glances beside him, curious, and immediately feels his words gum up in his mouth. 

Eddie’s watching, gaze heavy and unreadable, as if they weren’t just riffing back and forth a moment ago. Richie meets it best as he can, trying his hardest not to let the self-consciousness seep back in. “What? See something you like, Eds?” 

Eddie smiles, the smallest upward tilt of the corner of his mouth. His hand comes up, settling on Richie’s cheek. Eddie’s thumb sweeps along his cheekbones, just below where his glasses rest. “Maybe,” he says. 

Richie’s mouth drops. Eddie smiles again, a little smug but mostly unbearably soft. Weakly, Richie says, “I, uhh, that’d be a first.” 

Eddie’s hand on his face is incredibly warm. Richie doesn’t know why this feels so much _more _than when he’d done this exact same thing to Eddie, sitting in the living room with Eddie’s cheeks carefully cradled between his palms. 

That’s a lie. Richie knows why. It’s because Richie’s always the one to reach out, to lay his fingertips on Eddie, and Eddie never pulls away, will push back into Richie’s touch every time, but he’s never been the one to initiate it. 

Richie doesn’t know what to do with this. He clears his throat. “Eds?” 

“What does it take to shut you up, I swear,” Eddie says with fond resignation, and Richie opens his mouth to answer, but before he can say anything at all Eddie’s leaning in, hand cupping Richie’s jaw, and Richie’s brain shorts out entirely. 

Eddie’s mouth is hot, and he tastes like the shitty drinks Richie’s been mixing all night, salty-sweet with a hell of a kick. Richie makes a noise that sounds vaguely like he’s been shot, frozen precisely where he’s sitting, heart hammering at the tight cage of his ribs with such fervent desperation he thinks it might just break free. 

The kiss lasts probably three seconds and yet also all of eternity.

Eddie pulls back, dark eyes watching Richie intently. Richie stares back like an idiot. He really hopes he doesn’t puke, because that probably would not send the right kind of message. Richie doesn’t know what kind of message is the right one, exactly, just that it’s not _that_. 

Eddie’s knuckles ghost gently along his cheek. Richie’s eyes are watering he’s staring so hard. He needs to say _something_. Anything, really, other than sitting here like a dumbstruck fool. 

He opens his mouth. “Um,” he says. 

Eddie smiles. The corners of his eyes crinkles. “Thanks for coming after me, Rich,” he says. 

“Uh,” says Richie. 

Eddie’s thumb brushes the corner of Richie’s mouth. “Thanks for a lot of things, honestly.” 

Before Richie can say anything to embarrass himself further, Eddie clambers to his feet, groaning as he stretches out his back. Richie watches him as if he’s a hallucination that may crumble into ash at any moment. Eddie glances back down at him and holds out a hand. 

“Come on,” he says. “The others probably think we’re halfway to Miami with how long we’ve been gone.” 

Because Richie’s brain is still residing somewhere in the black hole of nothingness that is his current perception of reality, he reaches out and takes Eddie’s hand, allowing him to haul him to his feet. “The Losers know if I was going to elope with anybody it’d be Bev. She’s the nicest.” 

“That’s factually untrue,” Eddie says, without missing a beat. “If you want to elope with the nicest Loser, it has to be Ben.” 

“That’s probably why they eloped with each other,” Richie says, like it’s a deep realization. 

“No, Rich, I think they eloped with each other because they’re stupidly in love,” Eddie says, deadpan, but he’s smiling ever so slightly. He gives the hand he’s still holding a squeeze. “Let’s go. Your pool’s waiting and I need you to make me another drink.” 

“Baby, you know I’d make you anything,” Richie says, in the most obnoxious voice he can muster. Somehow, it still does not do a single thing to hide the raw, brutal honesty of it. 

.

Day two of the Losers reunion goes significantly slower than the first. In part, because all of them are forty-fucking-years old and can’t go knocking back tequila like college kids and expect to roll out of bed daisy-fresh come the next day. 

Sunday morning involves a houseful of groggy people tripping over each other; Bill, puking in the bathroom despite the fact Richie is relatively sure he’d only had two drinks, and Mike wearing two pairs of Richie’s sunglasses despite the fact they’re both prescription and Mike’s vision is unerringly perfect. Ben stands in the kitchen, making them all revolting kale smoothies with grim determination, and Richie only agrees to drink his because Eddie threatens to spoon feed it to him otherwise and Richie does not trust him not to make good on the threat. 

It has been, by Richie’s rough estimate, eleven hours and forty-six minutes since Eddie Kaspbrak kissed him on the bathroom floor, and Richie still has not even begun processing that well enough to permit anything even approaching intimacy. 

By the time noon hits, they’re more or less functional, and Beverly drags them into town for lunch, pointedly refusing to eat anything in the barren hellscape that’s Richie’s refrigerator. 

“Eddie,” she says, as they bump elbows around the crowded table of the only classy Italian restaurant open this early in the day, “I’m so disappointed in you. You’ve been here a week and yet somehow Richie’s kitchen still looks like a bachelor pad.” 

“Look,” Eddie says, pointing his fork at her, “we’ve been eating fine, it just doesn’t look like it because we didn’t exactly go grocery shopping for you assholes.” 

“Why not?” Mike asks. “I would have gone grocery shopping for _you.” _

“Mike, you live in a caravan, I don’t think you’re hosting anybody,” Richie says, swiping some bruschetta off the side of Ben’s plate while he’s distracted. “How many people even fit in there? Two and a half? We’d have to saw Ben into pieces just to get him through the door he’s so jacked.” 

“The caravan makes it cheaper to travel,” Mike says peacefully as he firmly takes back Ben’s bruschetta and returns it to his plate before he’s even noticed. “Not all of us need some crazy Beverly Hills mansion to be happy.” 

“I _do not _live in Beverly Hills,” Richie says firmly. “Even if Eddie would make a smoking hot real housewife.” 

Beverly cackles loudly, and it’s only Richie’s hasty removal of his hand from the table that stops Eddie stabbing it with his fork. 

“Please,” Bill says weakly from where he’s slumped against the window. He’s coopted a pair of the sunglasses Mike had been wearing earlier. “Please, can we keep our voices at inside level?” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Richie says in a dramatic stage whisper. “Did somebody have a rough night? Full of two whole glasses of rum and coke?” 

Bill groans and slinks down further in his seat. “I had more than that.” 

“You had three,” Ben says. “I should know. I was counting.” 

“Why?” Eddie asks, baffled. 

“I wanted to make sure nobody was going to puke in the pool I was swimming in,” Ben says. “The second any of you looked even slightly tipsy I was out of there.” 

“Reasonable, and also thank you for looking out for my pool, even if your motives were selfish,” Richie says, toasting Ben with his glass of sparkling water. Ben returns the gesture with a grin. 

“It’s been a while since I’ve had anything to drink,” Bill says. “Mike drugging me really put me off being any kind inebriated for a while.” 

Eddie’s head snaps up. “I’m sorry, did you just say that Mike _drugged _you?” 

“Only a little!” Mike says defensively. “Just so he’d see the Ritual of Chud! Do you know how hard it was trying to convince any of you to stick around when I’d been the only one who’d seen it?” 

“How about,” Beverly says in a voice far too loud for such a nice restaurant, “we don’t talk about the time we were nearly murdered by a clown and also Mike lied to us for two days straight.” 

“You’d be so lucky to be ‘nearly murdered’,” Eddie says with exaggerated air quotes. “Some of us _were,_ thanks.” 

A silence falls clunky and awkward over the table for a moment, hitting all of them in the sorest places they’ve been trying to hide on the way down. Richie doesn’t think Eddie necessarily means it as an accusation, but he also thinks that for all they’ve been trying to get it through his thick head, Eddie still hasn’t quite grasped the fact his death wasn’t an event that’d only impacted _him _\- that the rest of the Losers have been trying their hardest to comes to terms with it themselves. 

“Well,” Richie says, once the silence stretches just a beat too long to be comfortable, “it sure is a good thing that your commitment issues extend all the way to death, huh?” 

The break in the tension is almost audible, a collapsing of tight shoulders and tighter smiles. Eddie’s elbow slams into Richie’s side with the gentleness of a jet taking off, and Richie nearly upends his glass of water onto Ben who’s sitting opposite him. 

“You sure you wanna start that conversation, Richie?” Bill asks from across the table, propping his glasses up a moment so Richie gets a good glimpse of his blue eyes as he smiles. “I’m not sure that’s a war you’re going to win.” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Richie says, shoving Eddie back. “Because you’ll all gang up on me like _always. _Sometimes I don’t know why I miss you people, I really don’t.” 

“I think,” Beverly says, voice sugar-sweet, “that it’s time to go.” 

Richie looks up and catches sight of the manager approaching them swiftly, expression stern and the weathered lines of his grandfatherly face promising a fantastic lecture. 

“I swear,” Mike sighs, setting down his cutlery. “We can’t have a nice meal out anywhere without you children causing a scene.” 

“Eddie started it!” Richie says at the exact same time Eddie snaps, “Well maybe if _Richie _didn’t -.” 

“Sirs,” says the manager, coming to a stop at their table. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to -.” 

“Check please!” Richie says, smiling broadly. 

.

Richie takes the Losers on a walking tour of LA after lunch, giving a nasally summary for every building they pass by, especially the ones he doesn’t know or look especially boring. The others must still be riding the high of Eddie’s return, because nobody beeps him, and he gets more than a few laughs as he introduces a bright blue ice creamery as “the scene of a local tragedy beyond words”. 

Eventually, the others trail ahead, taking in the sights and catching up, and Richie lets them, content to watch from behind, hands tucked in his pockets. It’s not until he feels a shoulder graze his own that he realizes Eddie’s stuck with him, matching Richie’s lazily strides. 

Eddie catches him looking and raises a brow. “What?” 

“Nothing,” Richie says, too quickly. “Just thought you’d wanna get some gossip in with the local tourists here.” 

“I mean, I’ve been here a week already, it’s hardly like a new city,” Eddie says. “And it’s not all that different from New York.” 

“Don’t let the people hear you say that or you will absolutely be murdered in the streets,” Richie says. 

“I think I can take them,” Eddie says. 

Richie’s face cracks into a smile he can’t help. “I don’t know, Eds. Unless we’re talking featherweight class here -.” 

“Oh, fuck you, asshole. Five-nine is the world average!” 

Eddie sounds so genuinely mad that a passing pedestrian gives them an alarmed look, but Richie can’t stop from smiling wider. “You wanna know why I can’t believe you’re a risk analyst? Shit like this. You’re the biggest walking risk taker I know.” 

Eddie looks startled for a second. “I am categorically incapable of taking any risk at all, you dickwad. That’s why I spent all of my adult life eating gluten free bagels for breakfast every morning despite the fact I lived two blocks from the best doughnut place in the city.” 

“Bagels versus doughnuts aren’t a risk,” Richie informs him, “that’s just a personal preference. Now, threatening to take on a metaphorical mugger in L-fucking-A? That’s risk taking at its extreme, baby.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Maybe I went into risk analysis because I’m just such a specialist in the field, then.” 

It’s on the tip of Richie’s tongue to say something stupid - _you’ve always been the specialist in my heart, Eds _\- when Bill looks over his shoulder and seems to realize they’re dawdling. 

“Hey, do you think maybe the star of the hour could make an appearance at his own party?” Bill calls, and Eddie sighs deeply, trying for aggravation but falling well short when Richie can see the smile on his face. 

“I’ve been back for _a week, _Bill. I’m hardly the star of anything anymore,” Eddie says. 

Beverly slows her step and immediately grabs Eddie’s hand with hers. “C’mon,” she says. “If you’re going to waste time bumming around one-on-one, it should at least be with me. Richie gets to see you every day and I live on the other side of the country.” 

“Hey!” Richie says. “No need to be selfish, okay. Plenty of Spaghetti to serve us all.” 

“Guys,” Ben says. “I think you’re holding up the sidewalk.” 

They absolutely are. Richie has never been the subject of so many stink eyes in his life, which is saying something considering he’s a professional fucking comedian. Half his job is being heckled. He cannot bring himself to give a shit. 

“They’re just jealous,” Richie says, taking Eddie’s spare hand in his own like three grown adults holding hands in the middle of the street is a perfectly normal thing to be happening. “Don’t let them get to you.” 

“You both suck,” Eddie says. “I’m going with Mike back to Florida.” 

Further ahead, Mike throws back his head and laughs.

.

Once they get back to the house, Beverly and Mike drag Eddie into the kitchen while the others vanish off in the vague direction of the bedrooms. Bemusedly, Richie glances between the dispersing group and, probably unsurprisingly, picks the kitchen. 

He finds Mike unpacking the shopping bags they’d stopped for while Beverly ties an apron that Richie knows he had not previously owned on Eddie. “I feel like I’ve seen this movie before,” Richie says, leaning on the countertop. “Except it involved less clothes and it wasn’t on a reputable site.” 

Mike snorts, and, before Richie can say anything else, tosses him his own apron. “If you’re going to be in here wisecracking, you can help.” 

Richie holds up the apron. It’s a lurid yellow in some cliché homemaker crosshatch pattern. “Do I get to know what we’re helping with now?” 

“Pizza,” Beverly says, spinning away from a rumpled Eddie who is modeling a picture perfect bow at his back. “Homemade, none of that processed crap.” 

“Careful, you’re starting to sound a lot like a certain someone there.” 

“Hey, fuck you,” Eddie says, heated. “See if I ever cook anything for you again.” 

“Enough fighting,” Mike says, hunched over the bench, a look of intense concentration on his face as he considers the recipe he’s pulled up on his phone. “And if anybody starts throwing food around, they can starve.” 

“Wow, Mikey. Think maybe you’re taking this all a little too seriously?” 

Mike looks up with a grave expression. “I’m thinking we got kicked out of a restaurant before I could finish the nicest bowl of minestrone soup I’ve seen in a while, and if somebody tries to sabotage another meal for me I might reconsider my stance on pacifism.” 

“You’re not a pacifist,” Richie says confidently. “You beat an alien clown to death.” 

“No,” Mike says. “I _bullied _an alien clown to death. That shows I’m exceptionally good at solving my problems with words.” 

“Is that what your therapist told you?” Richie asks, and Eddie huffs, looking up from the sink where he’s washing his hands. 

“You’re not funny,” he says to Richie. 

“You laughed!” 

“It wasn’t a laugh. It was -.” 

Beverly shoves a green pepper in Eddie’s hands and directs him to the counter with a firm push. “More cutting and less arguing,” she says, and before Richie can laugh, he’s pulled aside by a very adamant Mike and set to work on making the dough. 

Eventually, the other Losers filter into the kitchen. Richie’s house is nice, but it was not designed with the idea of hosting dinner parties. They knock together as they crowd around the bench, getting in each other’s way and swapping out chores as they get distracted, finding something more interesting and appealing they’d rather be doing. 

“You know,” Bill says, as he coaxes a knife out of Ben’s hand as he’s distracted talking with Mike about something that sounds absolutely snore-inducing, “when we get together like this, it’s like no time at all has passed.” 

“Feeling sentimental?” Richie asks. He’s perched on a stool, watching the proceedings with interest. 

“No,” Bill says. “I meant it’s like dealing with a bunch of thirteen year olds again.” 

All things considered, the pizza doesn’t turn out horrible. A little burnt in some places, a little raw in others, but largely edible. Impressive given that there had been six chefs in the kitchen and not a shred of culinary knowledge between them. 

“If this gives me salmonella, I’m suing,” Eddie says, juggling his plate as they tromp to the living room. 

“Interesting movie pitch,” Richie says. “Salmonella verses the living dead. What happens next will _shock _you.” 

“Are you a movie poster or a Buzzfeed article?” Ben asks, interested. 

“Stop calling me a fucking zombie,” Eddie says, but it’s weary. 

When they shuffle into the living room, Richie finally realizes what the others had been doing while Richie and Eddie had been busy being bossed around by Beverly and Mike. He stands in the doorway for a moment, baffled. “Really, guys?” To Bill, he says, “What happened to your snarky ‘oh, look at them, acting like such _children’ _high ground?” 

Bill smiles, completely unbothered. “Well, _some _aspects of being thirteen never grow old.” 

“Did you strip _all _the beds?” Eddie asks. “Do you know we just washed those sheets?” 

“We also raided your linen cupboards,” Ben says. “You need to stock up or you’re going to freeze in winter. You only had like, two spare blankets in the whole house.” 

“Yeah. And you’ve turned them all into… a nest?” 

“Don’t be a dick,” Bill says, elbowing Richie as he slips past him. “It’s...” He pauses, considering. 

“If you say a blanket fort,” Richie warns, “I really am going to send you back to kindergarten.” 

Beverly rolls her eyes and joins Bill, settling down among the mess of pillows and blankets that have been piled haphazardly together across Richie’s furniture, making his really quite expensive house look like the den of a stoner college student. He can’t say he minds. “Shut up and take a seat, Trashmouth.” 

Richie does, not in the least because Eddie is already making a beeline towards the couch and Richie will be damned if he lets somebody else get the seat next to him. 

They eat their shitty pizza and watch an assortment of childhood movies on Richie’s smart TV. Eddie slumps into his side when they switch from Ghostbusters to Indiana Jones, and at some point Ben, who’s sitting on the floor with his back pressed against Richie’s legs, falls dead asleep, snoring so loudly that it drowns out half the dialogue and makes it nearly fucking impossible for the rest of them to stop giggling like lunatics at his expense. 

Indiana Jones gives way to The Hunt for Red October, which was never really Richie’s cup of tea but gave Mike and Ben some kind of nerd boner. Eddie is asleep too, face half buried in the couch cushions and half crushed against Richie’s shoulder. He doesn’t dare move, barely dares to breathe, because waking him seems to be the worst possible thing in the world suddenly. 

At some point, as if acting on instinct alone, Beverly lifts her head from Ben’s lap and turns, looking right at them. The Losers have always been a freely affectionate bunch - for fuck’s sake, Bill has his legs tossed over Mike’s lap right this _very fucking minute _\- but for some reason Richie feels oddly caught out and it must show on his face because Beverly arches one perfect eyebrow at him. 

“Don’t,” Richie says, so quietly that only somebody who’s looking for him to speak might hear it, “say a single fucking word, Marsh.” 

Richie’s heart is kicking in his chest. He feels uncomfortable and sweaty, overly conscious of Eddie’s hand loose in the space between their knees. Beverly stares at him for a moment more and then she smiles; a really pretty thing that steals its way over her face like the sun. She turns away and lowers her head back to Ben’s lap. 

Richie breathes out. 

Eventually, the credits roll. Those of them who are still awake sit in the quiet for a moment, listening to Ben’s snoring and Eddie’s soft breathing, and then Bill says, “I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t really feel like putting all this shit back on the beds.” 

Richie laughs as quietly as he can, which isn’t very quietly at all, really, but Eddie barely stirs. “Oh, so trashing my house is fine, but cleaning it up is out of the question, huh, Big Bill?”

“I’m sure I’d give Eddie an aneurysm with the way I make the bed anyway,” he says. “Probably don’t fold the sheets right or something.” 

“Good thing it’s my house then,” Richie says. 

Mike laughs, startling him. Richie hadn't even known he was still awake. “Your house maybe,” Mike says, “but don’t think we haven’t noticed the way Eddie’s practically taken over.” 

It’s too dark for any of them to see, Richie knows, but he’s suddenly worried that his face is as red as it feels. Too loudly, he says, “So, how about the Dodgers, huh?” 

Next to him, Eddie groans, facing digging painfully into Richie’s shoulder and mutters, still mostly asleep, “Shut the fuck _up, _Richie.” 

Mortifyingly, Richie fucking _does_. A moment later Eddie breathes out, heavy and warm, dead to the world again. Across the room, Mike dryly says, “Yeah, how about them, huh?” 

“If _all _of you don’t shut up,” Beverly mumbles, “I’m going to pile drive you through the floor. We’ve gotta get up early to catch our flight tomorrow, and I’m _not _going to be happy if I have to go through it sleep deprived.” 

Beverly silences the room in a way Richie only wishes he could. Richie, who until this moment has felt too wired on _everything _to process being tired, finally realizes he’s probably a good five minutes away from passing the fuck out like this, slumped on the couch with Eddie asleep on him. If he could, he’d be happy to do just that, but Richie is forty years old, and his back hates him enough as it is. 

“Hey, Eds,” Richie mutters quietly, gently jostling his elbow. 

Eddie groans but pulls back, blinking blearily. “What?” 

“Do you wanna just…?” Richie gestures vaguely. “Maybe not sleep in a position that’s going to kill you in the morning?” 

Eddie sighs. “I really don’t care, Richie. It would have been fucking worth it.” 

“See?” Richie says, because he can’t help it, “You’re a shitty risky analyst.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he scoots back, grabbing Richie’s wrist and dragging him along. Confused, Richie allows it, and it’s only when Eddie presses firmly at his chest until Richie sinks back into the cushions does Richie realize what he’s doing. “I could sleep on the floor,” he says. “There’s plenty of room beside Ben. If Beverly gets the bee out of her bonnet and shares.” 

“I won’t,” Beverly says, sounding half asleep. 

“Shut the fuck up, oh my god, I just want to _sleep,” _Eddie says, and then slots himself effortlessly into the sliver of space beside Richie. The sofa was not at all made for two grown men of their size to spoon on, but Ikea clearly did not give Eddie that note. “Stop making this weird.”

“I have never in my life been in a situation and not made it weird,” Richie says, and Eddie’s quiet, sleepy laugh soothes some of the nervous tension rattling through him. He wonders if the others are still awake, listening to them. God, he hopes not. 

_“Sleep, _Richie,” Eddie says. 

Richie does, in a mess of blankets and pillows and the people he loves most in the whole fucking world. In the morning, they’ll have to pack them all into the car, drive them to the airport and watch them vanish, scattered along the various coasts of their stupidly big country, and Richie’s spent the whole day waiting for the anxiety to hit, the fear of letting them out of his sight in case they never enter it again. 

It doesn’t. 

This time, he realizes, he really does get to keep them all. 

For a moment, half asleep and listening to his friends quietly breathing, Richie almost swears he could hear the sound of somebody else, a phantom seventh breathing in perfect synch with them all, right where he belongs. 

Richie goes to sleep feeling somehow both safe and _whole. _

.

Life after the Losers visit runs in very much the same vein as life _before _the Losers visited, which is to say, Richie is both stupidly, _ridiculously _happy and also low-key terrified at all times. 

However, the exact source of the fear has altered, shifted two gears up and a notch to the left. Richie isn’t so afraid that Eddie’s just a hallucination anymore, a ghost of his own imagining. The others had been there, had touched him, had _loved _him. Edward Kaspbrak is back from the dead, and he’s sleeping in Richie Tozier’s spare guest room. 

Now, instead of being afraid that Eddie isn’t real, he’s afraid that, sometimes, the moment in the bathroom where Eddie had _kissed _him _is_. 

It’s been seven days since Richie had learnt how Eddie’s mouth had felt, and he can say with iron certainty that it has not left his mind for a second since. There is a good chance that when Richie is a ripe old eighty-six years old and withering away in his hospital bed, it’ll be the smell of bleach and the hot taste of tequila he goes out thinking about. 

Eddie had _thanked him. _Who the _fuck _does that? What the _fuck_ does that even mean? Richie is not and has never been emotionally equipped to handle something like this. 

Mostly, he does his best to act like nothing has changed, because that’s the thing; nothing _has _changed. Eddie still treats him exactly the same, hasn’t made any other pass of any kind at Richie, and if he’s at all as hyper aware of every little point of contact between them as Richie is, he doesn’t show it. 

So Richie keeps up the act. He waits it out. 

Then, like he’s so good at fucking doing, Eddie throws him another curveball. 

Richie’s sitting on the sofa, aimlessly flicking through Netflix like there’s anything he feels like watching, when the front door bangs open loud enough to make him jump. Eddie’s been out on a run for about half an hour, and Richie hadn’t been expecting him back for another half an hour yet. 

“Eds? Is that you? Please say yes, because I do not have the energy to deal with a home invasion right now.” 

Eddie comes into view. For a second Richie is distracted, as he always is, by Eddie’s running shorts, then, a moment later, he’s distracted by the fucking _dog _in his arms. 

“Uh,” Richie says, staring. “Is that…?” 

Eddie’s jaw is set firmly. His hair is windblown and his eyes narrow. With the way he has the dog bundled in his jacket pressed firmly to his chest, he looks like he came straight out of a renaissance painting. It is perhaps not the first time Richie’s had that thought. “Is that _what? _I’m not a mind reader.” 

Eddie makes a beeline for the main bathroom, then seems to change his mind at the last second and turn towards Richie’s room. Immediately, Richie knows his goal is to make a mess of Richie’s ensuite out of sheer spite because Eddie is so very predictable like that. 

“Hey, hold on, don’t leave me just sitting out there,” Richie says, lurching to his feet and hurrying after him. “You can’t just bring an animal into my house and not expect me to _pet _it.” 

Eddie’s already crouched on the floor, filling up the tub and testing the temperature with his fingers. The dog sits on the puddle of Eddie’s jacket, staring up at him adoringly, tongue lolling out of its mouth and squat little nose a shiny black. It’s a pug, or at least Richie’s pretty sure it is, because it looks both absolutely hideous and incredibly adorable. 

“You don’t want to pet him right now,” Eddie says. “I found him in a garbage can.” 

“A _garbage can?” _Richie knows LA is kind of, you know, Like That, but Jesus. “How long do you think he was in there?” 

“Hopefully not long enough to contract anything,” Eddie mutters. He switches the taps off and turns, carefully plucking the little guy off the floor. He looks so small in Eddie’s hands, and Richie cannot help but stare as if his life depends on it. “He doesn’t seem like he’s hurt at least.” 

“How did you even find him?” 

Eddie stands up and, so achingly gentle, lowers the squirming ball of dog into the water. It makes a pitiful whine. “Heard something in a trashcan as I was running past.” Eddie goes quiet for a second, scratching lightly behind the dog’s ear. “Honestly, it gave me a heart attack. I thought it was the stupid fucking clown again, and I just… I had to check. Wasn’t the stupid fucking clown. Instead it was this guy eating half a 711 burrito.” 

“Ah,” Richie says, nodding sagely. “A fellow Trashmouth, I see.” 

For the first time since he walked in the door, he can see the corner of Eddie’s mouth twitch up for a second in what might have been a smile. “Yeah, seems like you two have a lot in common.” 

The bathroom falls into silence. The dog barks, splashing as he squirms in the water, but Eddie holds him down effortlessly as he gently scrubs the worst of the filth from his fur. Richie’s drawn forward like a magnet, couldn’t resist the pull even if he wanted to. He plops himself on the side of the tub, and Eddie spares him a brief glance before returning his attentions to the dog. Richie says, “You want me to get the shampoo?” 

“I don’t think you’re meant to use human shampoo on dogs,” Eddie says. “Something about it being too acidic.” 

Richie cranes his neck to see around Eddie’s back. The pug seems to have resigned himself to his fate and is letting Eddie’s bossy hands wash him efficiently. Smart boy. “We’ll have to pick some up, I guess,” Richie says. 

The tension that had been slowly draining from Eddie’s shoulders snaps back into place. “Why would we do that?” 

Richie stares at him. “Uh, so we can wash the dog properly next time?” 

Eddie stalls in what he’s doing. The pug whines, nudging at his hands until Eddie moves them again, smoothing his palms over the sleek fur. “They’ll probably wash him at the shelter.” 

Richie pauses too. Carefully, he asks, “Is that what you wanna do? Take him to a shelter? Because I have to tell you, Eds, the way you blew through the house like a hurricane with a mission of destruction really gave me the impression that you were hoping for something else.” 

“It’s your house,” Eddie says immediately. 

“And what? You think I don’t like dogs? Do you not remember the summer when we were eleven where I swore up and down my mom was going to get me a puppy for my birthday?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “She got you a goldfish instead and it was dead inside a week.” 

“I’d like to think I’ve grown a bit since then,” Richie says wistfully. 

“Pass me a towel,” Eddie says, holding out a hand, and Richie obediently does. Eddie uses it to wrangle the dog from the tub, wincing as both he and the bathroom floor are liberally splattered with water. “Why haven’t you then?” 

Richie is so distracted watching Eddie gently rub the dog dry that it takes him a moment to realize he’s been asked a question. “What?” 

Eddie still doesn’t look at him, towel scrubbing wet fur. “If you want a dog why haven’t you gotten one yet?” 

There had been a period a couple of years into his career taking off where Richie had seriously considered it. He’d hit the age where staying in was preferable to going out, and what few friends he did have were more acquaintances than anything else, and the stupid fancy house Richie had bought to impress who the fuck knows felt far too big and far too empty. 

That’s what people did when they were lonely, wasn’t it? Get a dog? Put funny hats on it, make a dedicated Instagram page - the whole shebang. In the end though, Richie had known he was away too much to justify it, too busy touring the worst comedic stages of America to be responsible for another living creature.

“Timing never seemed right,” Richie says breezily, scooting off the edge of the tub and dropping to his knees beside Eddie. He sweeps the squirming bundle of fur into his arms. “Who’s a good boy? _Who’s a good boy?” _

“Richie, you’re getting soaked,” Eddie protests, as if his own shirt isn’t already a lost cause. 

“Getting me wet is just how he shows his love,” Richie says. “Just like your -.” 

Eddie drops the damp, dog-smelling towel over Richie’s head as he gets to his feet. “We’re going to have to call the vets tomorrow,” he says. “God knows what he could have caught living in a fucking trashcan.” 

“I mean, we should probably name him before we start inflicting him with your hypochondria.” 

“Wanting to make sure we’re not letting a mutt with rabies sleep on the couch is a valid concern!” Eddie says heatedly. His cheeks are flushed from wrestling with the dog, and his soaked shirts are sticking high on his thighs. It takes everything Richie has not to stare. 

“He’s not a mutt!” Richie insists, hoisting the ball of fur into the sky Lion King style. “This is the rightful king of LA’s trash system and you should show him the respect he deserves.” 

Eddie does not look impressed. “And what are you thinking of calling the rightful king of LA’s trash system?” 

Richie pretends to think about it deeply while he cradles the dog against his chest. A wet nose presses into his jaw and he can’t help but smile. “I was thinking of something elegant that would live up to his legacy.” 

“I’m not going to want to hear this, am I?” Eddie asks, resigned, as he bends to pull the plug from the tub. 

“It’s okay, Pig,” Richie says, scratching the dog behind the ear. “He’s always like this. You’ll get used to it.” 

Eddie straightens up, wet hands on his hips and frown on his face. “We’re not fucking calling the dog Pig, are you fucking serious?” 

“What else would you call a dog you find in a trashcan eating half a gas station burrito?” Richie says. Then, to the dog as he takes one of its fury paws in a shake. “Pig, it is an _honor _to meet you.” 

“We are _not _calling it Pig.” 

They call the dog Pig.

.

In the week after Pig joins the household, Richie comes to learn some very important truths. The first is that Eddie is hilariously bad with animals even when he so clearly wants to be _good _with them, and the second is that dogs kinda, like, pee on everything they can. 

Between Eddie’s fastidious obsession with cleanliness and Pig’s pinball bladder, the sheets in Richie’s house have never been so clean. They must go through the wash every other day at this point, and Richie can’t even bring himself to be mad about it. It’s hard to be mad about _anything _when he’s living with his childhood crush, his teenage wet-dream, and his adult fucking _true love -_ and also the cutest dog in the whole fucking planet too. 

It’s been three weeks since Eddie showed up on his doorstep. Richie is beginning to think he might fall into a pit of fucking lava and still feel personally blessed by god. Which is probably why he’s not expecting it when real life finally comes barreling at him.

Richie’s in the laundry loading a fresh batch of sheets into the dryer while Eddie washes the dishes, Pig snoozing in the spare room where he likes to hide once he’s realized he’s pissed on one item too many, when he hears the front door slamming shut. 

Richie straightens up, frowning, because as far as he knows Bill’s in New York on a business trip at the moment, and he _knows _Bill wouldn’t just give out his key without asking - 

“Richie?” Steve hollers. “Richie, I know you’re fucking home; the TV’s playing and your lights are on.” 

Richie’s stomach plummets like lead. _Oh fuck, _he thinks, dropping the sopping wet washing on the floor with a faint splat and rocketing out of the laundry. He’s not quick enough, however, because he careens into the living room just as Eddie steps out of the kitchen, dish towel over his shoulder, frowning deeply. Steve is standing two steps from the foyer, staring at Eddie with a look of both abject surprise and dawning realization. 

“Who the hell are you?” he asks. 

“Who the hell am I?” Eddie repeats, sounding baffled. “Who the fuck are _you?” _

“Steve!” Richie says, far too loudly, desperately stealing all the attention. “What the hell, man? What are you doing here?” 

The surprised expression on Steve’s face turns murderous. “Well, maybe if you’d answer your damn phone once in a blue moon, then I wouldn’t need to be here at all, huh?” His gaze skitters to Eddie, frown deepening, and then back to Richie again. “Is this where you’ve been? Shacking up and playing domestic while I try and convince the media you’re not on some kind of rampaging drug bender?” 

Richie doesn’t know why he’s so consistently surprised that consequences for his actions exist. “That’s not -.” 

“It’s been a _month and a half, _Richie. And I haven’t heard jackshit from you other than one single message about ‘needing time’. Needing time for what, huh?” 

“I sent more than one message!” Richie protests, scrabbling frantically to remember if he had, in fact, sent any messages at all. 

“Uh,” Eddie says from the kitchen doorway. He looks surprisingly dumbstruck, deeply rattled in a way that Richie isn’t used to seeing from him without a killer clown bearing down on them. “Maybe I should just -.” 

Steve snaps his fingers at points at him. “And who the fuck is _this? _Don’t think I don’t recognize a new face when I see one.” 

“He’s a friend,” Richie snaps. 

“A friend? Richie, you don’t _have _friends.” 

Richie reels back, surprisingly hurt. “Wow, Steve. Fuck you too, I guess.” 

There’s the sound of paws padding over the floorboards and all three of them look up at once to see Pig slinking into the room, drawn to all the commotion like a fly to vinegar. Steve takes one look at his adorable face and seems to have an aneurysm. 

“Are you kidding me? A new boyfriend _and _a new dog? Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with Richie Tozier?” 

Before Richie can even begin to panic, Eddie throws his hands in the air and snaps, “Okay! Enough! I don’t need to be here for this. I’m going to take Pig for a walk. Text me when the house is clear.” 

Richie’s throat feels dangerously near to closing up. “Eds, you don’t need to…” 

“No,” Eddie says firmly. “You stay here and fix your career, Rich, or I’m going to punch you in the face. I’m not joking.” 

“Neither of us are joking, and that’s why my career needs fixing,” Richie says weakly, and Eddie rolls his eyes but it looks fond. 

The apartment lingers in tense silence as Eddie vanishes back into the kitchen. A moment later he remerges, sans dish towel but plus dog leash, and calls Pig over with a quiet whistle. Pig obediently waddles over, sitting politely while Eddie clips it to his collar. 

“I’ll pick up more soap while I’m out,” he says. “Let me know when it’s clear to come back.” 

“Yeah, uh. Sure.” 

Richie watches Eddie and the dog vanish out the door. He wishes desperately he could go with them, because he can already tell this conversation is going to be one of his worst with Steve to date, which is saying something considering Steve once threatened to send him to rehab what seems like a lifetime ago now. 

Steve doesn’t disappoint. “So do you want to tell me what the fuck’s happening or should I just start guessing?” 

Richie rubs tired hands over his face before turning and making a beeline to the bar. It’s running very close to empty, but with Eddie watching him like a hawk he hasn’t found the time nor the desire to restock it. “You like whisky, right?” 

“What I like is when my client actually speaks to me about their problems instead of running away for weeks on end and leaving me to clear up the mess.” A brief pause and then Steve adds, “Yes, I’ll take the fucking whisky.” 

Richie pours them both a generous helping, passing Steve his serve before sinking down on the sofa and knocking back half his glass in one go. “First of all,” Richie says, “I cannot believe I have to tell you this, but you just came very close to outing me to my best fucking friend, and that is _not cool_ on so many levels, dude.” 

Steve looks surprised and then, a second later, genuinely apologetic. “Ah, shit, Richie.” He runs a hand sheepishly through his hair. “I’m sorry, I really am. I thought - well…” 

“I know what you thought,” Richie says stiffly. “You made that very clear when you _shouted _it at us. We’ll be lucky if people halfway across the city don’t know I’m gay now.” 

Steve rolls his eyes. “Stop being so dramatic. I _am _sorry, but your friend looked like he was barely paying attention.” 

Richie scowls, because whether Eddie had been paying attention or not really wasn’t the point. “I know I’m not exactly winning any awards for being your favorite client in the world tonight, but that was still a shitty thing, okay? It just was.” 

Steve holds up the hand not nursing his glass of whisky. “And I said I was sorry. I can’t do anything about it now. But hell, what did you think I was going to think? He’s, what, doing dishes in your house and walking your _dog_ and you expect me to think he’s just a friend?” 

“I don’t really want to talk about Eddie right now,” Richie says, which is a lie because he _always _wants to talk about Eddie, but also the truth because he cannot think of a single thing he wants less than to try and explain this whole shit show to his fucking _manager _of all people. 

Steve does not look impressed. “Tough shit, Tozier, because it seems like he might have a thing or two to do with your vanishing act, and if you don’t explain that one to me real fast we might have to look into renegotiating your contract.” 

Richie doesn’t think Steve would _actually _fire him, but he looks just pissed enough that Richie isn’t sure he’d bet his career on it. 

“Look,” Richie says, “It’s not - it’s not just about Eddie.” 

“Not _just? _So he plays a part then?” 

Richie thinks, at some point, the Losers really should have sat down and written a script for what to say when everybody else in their lives who hadn’t lived the things they’d lived asked them to explain it all to them. There’s nothing he can offer that doesn’t sound crazy, and Steve might not be his friend but he’s spent the past ten years being something of a confidant, out of necessity if nothing else, and he will not stand there and willingly eat any bullshit Richie tries to spoon feed him. 

“One of my closest childhood friends died,” Richie says, because it might only be half the story but it’s the _truth. _“That night, uh. When I got the call before I had to go on stage.” 

Steve says, “Shit, Richie. You didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t have made you go out there after getting news like that, you know that, yeah? I’m not a _monster.” _

Yeah, Richie knows a thing or two about monsters at this point, and Steve is about the furthest thing from one. It’s not like he can explain though, not like he can tell him that the call wasn’t ‘the call’ - just a premonition to ‘the call’. Instead, he says, “I wasn’t thinking straight. I hadn’t thought about him in literal decades, but, you know, once I knew he was gone it all came back.”

“Is that where you vanished off to?” 

“Kinda,” Richie says. “It’s complicated.” He finishes the last of his whisky. He desperately wishes for a second glass, but he doesn’t give into the temptation. “Anyway, I met up with our friends from back then, me and Stan, and we all reconnected and mourned and all that shit. Then, if you could believe it, a fucking house fell down on us and Eddie nearly kicked the bucket too.” 

Steve laughs and then, when Richie doesn’t laugh too, says, “Oh. You’re being serious.” 

“Does this seem like something I’d joke about?” 

“I don’t know, Richie. Given you’re a professional fucking comedian, it can be kind of hard to tell what is and isn’t off limits to you sometimes.” 

Richie supposes that’s fair, but it stings a little all the same. “Yeah, well. This time I’m not fucking around. A house fell on us and Eddie nearly died. It was really touch and go a while. He got fucking impaled.” 

_“Impaled?” _Steve glances towards the door, as if expects Eddie to pop his head back in and confirm. “But he seemed pretty healthy.” 

Richie laughs. If the look Steve gives him is any indication, it’s exactly as unhinged as it sounds. He clears his throat. “It happened. He’s got a gnarly scar if you’re brave enough to ask him to show you, but I wouldn’t recommend it. He’s very mean.” 

“Is that why he’s staying with you?” Steve asks. “Are you, like, his medical guardian or something?” 

“No,” Richie says. “I’m his friend.” 

Steve looks skeptical. “Listen, I’m sorry about what I said earlier, that was uncalled for, but let’s be honest here, okay? I’ve never seen you with a friendship that lasted beyond six months. And Eddie? _Stan? _You’ve never even mentioned them, and I’ve known you a long ass time at this point, Richie.” 

“And I’ve known them longer,” Richie snaps. “I can’t - I can’t really explain it. Some shit happened, and we lost touch, but Eddie and Stan and the others - they’re the best friends I’ve ever had and ever will have. And Eddie needs a place to stay right now, and I have one.” 

Steve’s mouth is pressed thin. “So this is why you’ve been AWAL?” 

“What, are you saying that’s not reason enough?” 

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Steve says. He sets down his glass and asks, “I just feel like you’ve told me a whole lot and also nothing at fucking all.” 

That had, by and large, been Richie’s intention. “What did you expect?” 

“Truthfully? I was starting to worry the media was right and it was a drug filled bender after all.” 

“Fuck you,” Richie says again, harsher. “I haven’t done that in _years _and you know it.” 

“Okay, okay, okay.” There’s a faint chime and Steve pulls his phone from his pocket, frowning down at his screen. “I’ve got to go, but we _will _be talking about this again, you hear me, Richie?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie says. “I hear you.” 

“I’m serious,” Steve insists. “Answer your fucking phone next time I call or I swear to god -.” 

“I _will, _Steve. Geez, a guy has breakdown for one damn month and suddenly he can’t be trusted with anything anymore.” 

Steve does not look impressed as he tucks his phone back away. “Apologize to your boyfriend for me, will you? I really didn’t mean to shout at him like that.” 

Richie’s fucking forty years old. He’s too old to feel this flushed over such a stupid sentence. “I already told you, Eddie’s a friend, okay?” 

Finally, Steve smiles. “Yeah, a ‘friend’,” he says with emphatic air quotes. “I’ve never seen you stutter so much talking to a friend before, Tozier.” 

“Get the fuck out of my house,” Richie says, but it’s without heat. 

“I’m going,” Steve says, heading for the foyer. “Remember, phone _on.” _

The door swings shut behind him and Richie is left alone in the empty apartment, sitting on the couch with two mostly empty glasses of whisky pressing sticky rings into the fine wood of the coffee table. Richie leaves them right where they sit because he knows it’ll piss Eddie off and he could use the equilibrium right now. 

Eddie answers his phone on the third ring. _“Hey, how’d it go?” _

Richie huffs out a laugh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Well, I’ve still got a job and Steve’s gone, so it could have gone worse I suppose.” 

Eddie makes a thoughtful hum under his breath. _“What did you tell him?” _

“As little as I possibly could,” Richie says honestly, and the small laugh Eddie gives is an electric jolt down the weary line of his spine. 

_“Pig and I are about a block away. We’ll be back home soon if the coast is clear.” _

Richie cannot even begin to think about how it feels to hear the word ‘home’ from Eddie’s mouth like that, so thoughtless and genuine. _It’s just a phrase, _Richie thinks sternly. _He doesn’t mean it like that. You know he doesn’t mean it like that. _

After weeks of living like this, tripping over one another in Richie’s house that has more than enough room but always seem to push them together, Richie is no longer sure of anything much at all. He can feel the ghost of Eddie’s mouth on his. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “I’ll be waiting.” 

.

Halfway through the fourth week of Eddie’s miraculous revival, and he’s still living with Richie. At this point, they have something that’s practically a routine.

It’s near midnight so they’re curled up on the sofa, the half-finished dishes from dinner are resting on the coffee table and Pig is tucked neatly between their thighs, greedily savoring their warmth. They’ve been watching some bullshit horror movie, a cheap Netflix affair, and the credits are rolling across the screen when Eddie reaches out to mute them. 

Immediately, Richie is suspicious. This isn’t part of the routine in the slightest.

“So,” Eddie says, not looking up from the TV, “I’ve been thinking.” 

Richie stretches widely, trying for nonchalance, and says, “Wow, Eds. Really putting the college degree to good use, I see.” 

Eddie digs his elbow ruthlessly into Richie’s side, narrowly missing Pig. “Shut up,” he says, as Richie tries to squirm away. “I’m serious, it’s…” He pauses. Then, with a deliberate carefulness, sets the wine glass he’d been nursing with dinner down beside their dishes. 

“Oh no,” Richie says. “This is the kind of conversation you can’t hold and drink to at the same time, huh?” 

Eddie rolls his eyes which Richie mistakenly takes for a good sign until the next words out of Eddie’s mouth are, “I’m heading back to New York on Friday.” 

Richie’s stomach plummets. His mouth goes cotton dry. Swallowing thickly, and says, “Oh.” 

Eddie’s gaze skitters away from him to the TV, as if the silent credits have any bearing on their conversation at all, and then back to Richie again. He looks so determined that Richie thinks that Eddie might be preparing to weather some kind of war. “I’ve been here for nearly a month, Rich. And it’s - it’s been great. It really has, but...” 

Richie had not sat down tonight prepared for this conversation, and he’s kind of reeling like he’s been kicked in the gut. “It’s fine,” he says, although he could not be less fine if he tried. “It’s fine, I get it, Eds. I get it. You don’t have to explain anything to me.” 

Eddie blinks at him, and then, tentatively reaching out a hand, says, “Richie, hey -.” 

_Oh hell no, _Richie thinks, because there are about a dozen follow ups to that sentence and he’s not really in the headspace to hear a single one of them. He goes to lurch to his feet but accidentally catches Pig in the side with his knee as he goes. Immediately, Pig yelps, scampering off the sofa and slamming into the coffee table, sending their dishes crashing hard to the floor in a shower of unfinished spaghetti and broken glass. 

Eddie and Richie both jump, staring first at the mess, then at Pig as he retreats behind the sofa, and then back to each other again. 

“Eddie,” Richie says in his most serious voice, “I understand that given the fact I’m sure that I look like I’m about to run halfway to Philadelphia you might have trouble believing me, but I promise you, it’s fine. You don’t need to explain anything to me.” 

Awkward, awful silence hovers between them. Richie’s room is approximately thirty steps away, and he thinks if he really, really tried he could outrun the pit in his stomach. Probably not Eddie though. 

Eddie’s shocked expression melts into a careful, controlled blankness. “Richie,” he says, “I’m going to clean this mess up. Can you please take Pig outside and sit the fuck down for a moment? 

“I’m fine,” Richie repeats quickly, shuffling a step back. “I’m just going to -.” 

“You’re going to step in the fucking mess you made and cut your foot open,” Eddie says, matter of factly, “and I am really not in the mood to play doctor right now when you’re acting like the world’s stupidest fucking idiot.” 

“I’m pretty sure both those words mean the same thing,” Richie says. 

“Richie. _Go.” _

Richie goes. 

Outside, Pig makes a beeline for the pool. He doesn’t like being in the water, but he loves to watch it, and he settles himself down on the edge, looking down at his reflection serenely. Richie settles onto one of the deckchairs, wishing he’d had the forethought to turn the porch lights on at least. All he’s got to see by is the light leaking out from the glass doors to the living room. 

Sitting outside in the quiet with just his dog for company, Richie starts to feel kind of stupid. He might as well have painted a neon sign on the wall that said ‘HEY I HAVE SOME UNRESOLVED ISSUES ABOUT YOU LEAVING’ and it’d have been just as fucking subtle as his completely unjustified freak out. It’s amazing, honestly, that Eddie’s put up with him this long. 

There’s a splash from the pool and Richie looks up to see Pig wiggling back from the edge, as if surprised that pawing at the water might, in fact, be a bad idea. “If you fall in I’m not getting you out,” Richie warns. “I know you can swim. You’re a dog. They named an entire swim style after you.” 

The light from inside brightens, and Richie turns to see Eddie slipping out the door. “I don’t think doggy paddling is an officially recognized style.” 

“Yeah, well,” Richie says, watching far too carefully as Eddie makes his way over. “The Olympics don’t know what they’re missing out on.” 

Eddie sinks onto the footrest of the other chair, near enough that Richie can actually see most of his face in the darkness. “Good to see you’re not halfway to Philadelphia,” Eddie says, because he’s actually kind of a dick. 

“Oh, fuck you,” Richie says weakly. 

“Can I talk now?” Eddie asks. “Or are you going to break some more glassware?” 

“That was Pig!” 

“Richie, I didn’t come out here to argue semantics.” 

_Why did you come out here? _Richie wants to ask snidely, but that’s unfair and he knows it. Eddie came out here to talk to him because he’s Richie’s best friend, and Richie’s acting like a jilted woman because Eddie offhandedly mentioned he might want to go _home. _To the place where his whole fucking _life _is.

“I’m sorry for being all…” Richie doesn’t have a non-incriminating word for what he’s being, so he makes a vague, frazzled hand gesture. “I was just, uh, surprised. Of course you want to go back to New York. You _should _go back to New York.” 

The corner of Eddie’s mouth turns down, which is the opposite response of what Richie was trying to achieve. “You want me to go back?” 

“What? No! Jesus fuck, Eddie. You’re the one who literally just _said _you wanted to go back!”

“I didn’t say that,” Eddie snaps. “I was trying to have an adult conversation with you about a serious topic and you completely freaked out on me like a toddler.” 

“A toddler? That was _at least _a middle schooler level freak-out,” Richie says. And then, “I literally heard the worse ‘I’m leaving for New York’ come out of your big fat liar mouth, Eds.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes and then looks to the night sky like it might offer some guidance. “Yeah, but I didn’t fucking say I _wanted _to go, asshole.” 

“I…” Richie pauses. “What?” 

“Richie,” Eddie says, “I’m planning on coming _back.” _

Richie’s whole world shrieks to a halt. He’s so conscious of the warm midnight air, of the hot, panicky feeling blooming in his chest. Of Eddie staring at him with his wide brown eyes and gorgeous fucking face. “What?” he croaks. 

“Is that what you were worried about?” Eddie says. “I’m right, aren’t I? You thought I was just going back to New York for good? Because you’re a stupid fucking idiot and couldn’t wait two minutes for me to finish explaining?” 

_“What?” _

Eddie looks at him for a second and then says, “If you don’t like this, just, I don’t know, push me off.” 

“What do -?” 

Eddie gets up from his chair and then, in one smooth movement, swings himself into Richie’s lap. Richie presses back and away, staring up at him in what he’s sure is a truly stupid amount of open mouthed awe. 

“Is this okay?” Eddie asks. 

Richie’s heart is pounding. He thinks he might be sick, which would be mortifying for more reasons than he can count. He nods mutely. 

The nervous tension in Eddie’s face eases. He reaches down and takes Richie’s slack hands, setting them bossily on his own hips. Richie lets him, feels the smooth cotton of Eddie’s shirt beneath his palms, and can’t help but dig his fingers in. 

“What,” Richie asks, sounding dazed even to his own ears, “the _fuck _is happening?” 

“Even you’re not that stupid, asshole,” Eddie says. “This isn’t exactly me being subtle here.” 

“No this is you… trying to kill me, I think? Eddie, I’m forty, my heart isn’t what it used to be.” 

Eddie smiles, teeth white in what little light is leaking out over the porch. “If I was going to kill you, I’d have done it last week when I found out you hadn’t been rinsing the dishes before you put them in the dishwasher.” 

“That’s what the dishwasher is _for_, Eds.” 

Eddie’s smile dims. His hands come up, pressing gently against Richie’s chest. He looks thoughtful and just maybe a little bit tentative. “I need you to listen to me for a second, because if I have to repeat myself I’m going to punch you in the face,” Eddie says. “Or maybe jump off a cliff. I haven’t decided yet.” 

“I’m listening,” Richie says. 

Eddie licks his lips. His hair is a mess, and Richie desperately wants to sweep his hands through it. “You’re an absolute nightmare of a person,” Eddie says. “When we were fourteen, I used to think that if God existed he sent you here to specifically test my patience. Your Voices drive me fucking crazy, and not in the way you want them to, and sometimes I want to strangle you with my bare hands.” 

“I was really hoping this was going in another direction -.” 

_“And,” _Eddie says, “I love you so fucking much it’s frankly disgusting.” 

Richie stares at him. Eddie meets his gaze, unflinching and determined. One of his hands rises from Richie’s chest, sinking into Richie’s hair and giving it a soft pull. “I thought you said you were listening, Trashmouth.” 

“I…” Richie’s ears are genuinely ringing. He wonders if it’s possible to get a concussion from the force of somebody’s words alone. 

Eddie snorts. “Oh my god,” he says. “Are you actually speechless right now?” 

“No!” Richie says immediately and loudly, even though he’s so winded that speaking feels like a lost art. “I’m just, fuck, Eds. I’m kind of like, half convinced I’m dreaming right now?” 

“Is that a good thing?” Eddie asks. 

“Is that - I have literally been dreaming about this since we were twelve, so yeah, I would say it’s a pretty damn good dream.” 

Eddie looks startled but the hand in Richie’s hair doesn’t retreat. _“Twelve?” _

Richie wonders if that was too much, if, somehow, he’s still misreading the fucking atmosphere. If Eddie sitting in his lap, telling him that he loves him, is somehow meant to be platonic, just a bro move, and Richie’s making it weird. 

“I mean,” Richie says swiftly, “that was still early days so it probably wasn’t, like, an actual, conscious fantasy on my part...” 

“Rich, shut the fuck up,” Eddie says, and wisely Richie does. “I just meant that you had shit figured out way before I did. It took me until we were sixteen to even admit that the way I thought about you maybe wasn’t entirely straight.” He pauses. “Took me a lot longer than that to realize that the way I thought about men in general probably wasn’t entirely straight.” 

Richie doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s still having trouble grasping that this is even happening at all, but Eddie beneath his hands feels so _real. _Daringly, he asks, “Did you think about saying anything? I mean, when we were kids?”

“I always thought maybe college,” Eddie says. “When I wouldn’t have to worry about my mother finding out, and if I was wrong… well, it’s easier to be brave when there’s distance between you and what you’re afraid of. And then -.”

“And then we forgot,” finishes Richie with dawning horror. His hands are still on Eddie’s hips. 

Eddie smiles wanly. “I was too late when we were kids, and then I was too late when we hit college. When we got the call, hell, Rich. I thought maybe this was meant to be it. Maybe this time.” 

Richie feels as if he’s only processing every second word out of Eddie’s mouth. He doesn’t think he can be blamed. This whole thing feels too close to something he’d have dreamt. “But you didn’t,” he says. 

“Everything happened so fast,” Eddie says. The hand he has in Richie’s hair tightens. “Fuck, like, I was working on it, I fucking was. I thought about telling you before we went into Neibolt, but at that point I think I’d used up whatever courage I had left on just following Bill into the stupid fucking house.” 

Richie gets that. He used the last of his courage just showing up in Derry again. Everything after that had purely been survival instinct. “You’re fucking with me.” 

“I’m really not,” Eddie says. “I hadn’t - I didn’t know _exactly _what I was going to do, but I figured once we got out of the sewers alive, I kinda _had _to tell you because I was pretty much out of excuses not to.” 

Richie’s stomach flips miserably. “Alive, huh?” 

Eddie’s smile is taunt enough to snap. “Yeah. I guess I was being really optimistic there too. Every goddamn fucking _time__._ The universe literally would not let me get a word in edgewise.” 

Richie wants to say something stupid, make a joke, any joke, because he feels like he’s drowning beneath the incredible pressure of the moment. Richie’s never met a serious conversation he hasn’t wanted to run from, but Eddie’s still sitting in his lap, has told Richie that he _loves him what the ever loving fuck _and if there’s anybody in the world that Richie owes whatever miserable scrap of sincerity he can dredge up, it’s Eddie. 

“After we killed It,” he says, “I, uh, tried to stay behind.” 

Eddie’s brows rise. “What?” 

Richie clears his throat. He can’t quite look Eddie in the eye. “You were dead, and I knew you’d hate it down there, and like, I’d barely had you back for two days and then you were _gone_. I kind of went to pieces. The others had to drag me out. If Ben wasn’t built like a fucking truck, I’d probably have gone right back in.” 

He can feel Eddie staring at him, the sharp pierce of his gaze. “You tried to -.” 

“I didn’t try to kill myself,” Richie says quickly. “It wasn’t - it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t thinking. I just knew that, fuck, if you weren’t in this world, I didn’t want to be either, and in that moment that made perfect sense to me.” 

The hand in Richie’s hair slides down to cup his cheek and Eddie forcibly wrenches his face to look at him. “Richie,” Eddie says seriously, “you have to have known I wouldn’t have wanted that.” 

“I hate to tell you, Eds, but I wasn’t really thinking about what you would have wanted. It was a pretty stereotypical Richie Tozier Selfish Hour Special,” Richie says. “Besides, you were _dead. _You didn’t get a say in anything.” 

Eddie wants to push it, Richie can see, but instead he asks, “What about you? Were you going to say anything?” 

Richie actually thinks about that for a moment even though he knows the answer already. He remembers being so stupidly young, crouched on the rotting wood of the kissing bridge, penknife in his hand and breath tight in his throat. _Somebody’s gonna see, _he’d thought, sick to his stomach. _Somebody’s going to see and then they’ll _know. 

“No,” Richie admits quietly. “Never where somebody would have heard it. I didn’t think it would have mattered.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “because you always were an idiot.” 

_“Hey, _you never gave me any reason -.” 

“Did you ever see me climbing into the fucking hammock with anybody else?” Eddie asks incredulously. “You weren’t subtle with the way you kept fucking touching my legs, you massive pervert. You think I’d have let you do that if I didn’t _want _it?” 

Richie had never permitted himself to examine that, actually. He’d been convinced if he dared look too closely at his interactions with Eddie, he’d lose the right to have them at all. “Well,” he blusters, “I mean, that was when we were kids, it’s not -.” 

“I literally showed up on your doorstep when I was magically resurrected!” Eddie says. “I _kissed _you!” 

Richie is suddenly deeply glad for the dark because he’s certain his face has gone an unattractive, blotchy red. “I wasn’t - I wasn’t sure if that meant anything.” 

“God help me,” Eddie marvels aloud. “I’m in love with a fucking _idiot.” _

Hearing Eddie say it like that - not just ‘love’ but ‘in love’ - nearly deals Richie a mortal blow. It’s so much. It’s _too _much. He reaches up, hooks his fingers in the collar of Eddie’s shirt, and drags him desperately down. Eddie makes a surprised noise as their mouths collide, but he kisses back instantly, hands soft on Richie’s face.

Richie would be content to lay out here all night, kissing Eddie until sunrise, but eventually Eddie pulls back. Richie tries weakly to hold him in place, but Eddie smiles as he leans away. 

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Eddie says. “Just… before we go any further I really think I should probably break-up with my wife first.” 

Richie’s stomach flips on the word ‘wife’ but Eddie’s chilly hands are pressed to his cheeks, and when Richie turns his head to gently kiss Eddie’s palm because he feels like he’ll die if he doesn’t, Eddie smiles at him. 

“How do you think she’s going to take that, huh?” Richie asks. 

“I’m hoping the shock of the fact I’m alive will soften the blow,” Eddie says. “But probably not well.” 

Uncertainly, Richie asks, “Did you want me to come with you?” 

Eddie shakes his head. “That’ll make it worse. You really don’t wanna deal with that.” 

“I mean, I helped you kill a child-eating clown from outer space, I think your wife probably couldn’t be as bad as that if she tried,” Richie says. 

“Let’s not count on it,” Eddie says dryly. Before Richie can ask what that’s supposed to mean, Eddie pushes away, throwing his legs over the side of the chair and climbing to his feet. Richie misses his warmth almost instantly, the press of him against the softest part of Richie’s stomach. “Come on,” Eddie says. “You’ve got a meeting with your manager tomorrow. You should at least pretend like you’re going to get a good night’s rest.” 

Richie slides off the chair, self-consciously running a hand through his hair. Eddie whistles loudly and Pig looks up, notices them both lingering by the door, and rushes to join them, nearly tripping over his own stubby feet as he goes. 

“Oh god,” Richie says, as Pig settles by his legs. “That’s it. He’s too adorable. I can’t take it. You somehow found the dumbest, most adorable dog in all of this fucking city, Eds.” 

Eddie grins, bending down to scoop Pig into his arm before he slides open the door with a rattle. “I thought you might appreciate somebody who operated on your wavelength.” 

“I know you just insulted me, but I’m still kind of in shock so I’m letting it slide,” Richie says, following Eddie back into the house. 

“Do you need a blanket?” Eddie asks. Pig squirms in his arms and Eddie sets him back down to plod off down the corridor to do whatever it is he does. “A nice glass of water?” 

Eddie’s teasing, he knows, but his eyes are soft and serious. Probably Richie isn’t doing as good of a job appearing to be a functional human as he’s attempting to. He thinks he should be allowed just a night of being completely brain dead though, because he’s reasonably certain he’s entire nervous system shorted out the moment Eddie sat in his lap. 

“Rich?” Eddie asks. “Are you in there?” 

“I’m…” Richie clears his throat. “Do you think maybe tonight you could, like, just stick with me? I think we both know that my bed is way more comfortable than yours anyway. Not to, you know, do anything. Just…” The longer he rambles, the deeper Richie falls into the immeasurable pit of his own embarrassment. “Just, you know. For tonight.” 

Eddie is quiet for a moment and Richie’s heart kicks so hard in his chest it's a wonder he doesn’t shower the floor with the splinters of his ribs. Then, Eddie says, “Jesus, Richie. Of course I don’t mind sleeping with you.” 

Richie breathes out slowly. “That would be. Yeah. Thanks.” 

Eddie doesn’t take his hand, but their palms brush as Eddie slips past him, making his way down the hall to his own room. “You don’t need to thank me for jack shit,” he says, which would have made Richie all kinds of emotional all on its own, but Eddie follows it up with, “loving you is never a chore.”

And Richie – well hell, he maybe wants to cry. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a super massive thank you again to everybody who has left such sweet comments on this fic. this fic has been a monster to write, but in a good way, and hearing all the nice things ya'll have said has really just kicked me in the gut to stay on top of it. you'll also notice that a) this chapter is longer than previous chapters, because b) i have no self control and this fic has officially been bumped to 4 chapters instead of the originally anticipated 3. 
> 
> if you notice any massive typos, please be kind, i just proofread 13k in one sitting at 1am when i have both work and a roadtrip the next day. 
> 
> tumblr: glenflower  
twitter: @doingwritebyme


	4. Chapter 4

The two days before Eddie heads back to New York seem to exist in a different plane of reality entirely than the one Richie’s come to learn that life at large operates on; some sort of shimmering middle distance that might dissolve if he dares come too close. 

Mostly, on the surface, things are exactly the same. They eat dinner and wash dishes and walk Pig; Eddie helps with some of the tentative new material Richie’s working on now that his ghostwriters are taking a step back and letting him breathe, and Richie allows Eddie to clear out space around the apartment for when he comes back with some actual fucking belongings, pretending as if seeing Eddie restack his bookshelf isn’t giving him a religious experience. 

They don’t touch _more, _because they have always been handsy even when operating under the flimsy illusion of platonic intimacy, but they touch… less innocently. A hand skating up the back of Richie’s shirt as he’s leaning over the sink to brush his teeth, Eddie’s legs in his lap when they’re sitting on the sofa, Richie’s fingers gently caught around his ankle like he used to do when they were kids, bunched together in the safety of the hammock. 

“Are you sure you won’t let me kiss you?” Richie asks, after he’s spent the better part of the evening with his hand on Eddie’s thigh, listening to him ramble on and on about some kind of international epidemic Richie has absolutely never heard of.

Eddie, predictably, goes a little pink. “You can try it, but I will absolutely elbow you in the face.” 

Richie grins, digging his nails gently into Eddie’s skin. The shorts he’s wearing don’t ride nearly as high as they used to when they were kids, which is a shame, but Richie is absolutely not complaining about what he’s got. “I might be into that. Since when has a little danger bothered me?” 

“You know, if I’m legally dead and you’re this into me, what does that make you, I wonder?” Eddie ponders. 

Richie’s grin widens. “Harsh, babe, but you’ll have to try harder than that. Besides, I already told you, I’m pretty sure you’re just listed as missing.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, kicking his legs out further and deliberately kneeing Richie in the stomach as he sinks down. “That should make coming back from the dead slightly less of a logistical nightmare, then.” 

“If you want to be optimistic about it, I’m not going to shoot your bubble down,” Richie says. 

“That is not how that saying goes in the slightest,” Eddie says firmly. His skinny ankle is really digging into Richie’s thigh, but he couldn’t care less if he tried. He smooths his thumb over the jagged bump of it. “It might have been easier if I hadn’t waited a whole fucking month to try and fix it.” 

“When you come back from the dead I think you really get as long of an adjustment period as you need,” Richie says. “That’s just my personal opinion though.” 

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “I think at this point we might be considered professionals on the topic, actually.” 

Richie laughs. “I’ve always wanted to be a zombie scientist,” he says. “That was always my backup plan if this standup thing didn’t work out.” 

Eddie’s look is incredibly unamused. “Call me a zombie one more time, Tozier, and you’ll get to see how it feels yourself.” 

“Pretty sure I’m getting a pretty good indication for how a zombie feels right now, if you know what I mean.” Richie gives a very pointed shake of Eddie’s leg, hand creeping higher up the guarded territory of his thigh but no further than he knows he’s welcome. “Get it? Because you’re a zombie and I’m feeling you up.” 

“I can’t wait for the first time you get up on the stage with the jokes you wrote yourself and not a single person in the audience laughs at them,” Eddie says. “You’ll bomb harder than the pre-Derry show, and it’ll be entirely your fault for having the humor of a middle schooler even after all these years.” 

Richie smiles, helplessly charmed. “That’s so sweet of you to say, Eds. You know your support means the world to me.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, but there’s no heat behind it. Richie would be content to just sit there, tangled up in one another, making fun of his hypothetical future career, but Eddie says, “You sure you’re alright to take me to the airport tomorrow?” 

Richie’s stomach turns over instantly. He’d been doing a really quite excellent job of ignoring Eddie’s impending New York trip, and having the reminder dumped on him is like being doused with cold water. “You know I am,” he says. “I feel like you asked just to get me to shut up.” 

“I asked because I’m really fucking anxious, actually, and I kind of need to be reminded that everything has already been planned out and there’s nothing left for me to worry about,” Eddie says, and he doesn’t snap but there’s a noticeable tone in his voice that is far from relaxed. “I’m not exactly… this isn’t exactly a vacation for me, Rich.” 

“I know, I know,” Richie says, running a frazzled hand through his hair. “You know I didn’t mean to, like, imply it was. I’m just not - I’m going kind of crazy thinking about it, Eds, so I’d really rather not until we have to.” 

“Ignoring things doesn’t make them go away,” Eddie says, like it’s some seed of sage wisdom. 

“We ignored Pennywise for twenty-seven years and that worked out mostly fine,” Richie points out. 

“Yeah, until he came back from hibernation and tried to kill us again.” Eddie sighs, voice pinched, and Richie instantly feels contrite to have put that look on his face, but before he can apologize, Eddie says, “I’m only going to be gone for one night. We can do one night, can’t we?”

“Sure,” Richie lies, like the idea of Eddie even leaving his line of sight isn’t slowly killing him. The idea that Eddie will be clear on the other side of the country might as well be a death sentence for how hard it hits him. “We can do that.” 

The look on Eddie’s face says he’s not buying Richie’s flimsy facade in the slightest, but he kindly doesn’t say anything about it. Richie loves him for it more than he has the words to say - Eddie’s sixth sense for when to press and when to let Richie be. Nobody’s ever managed to understand him the way Eddie does, and he knows nobody ever will. 

“C’mon,” Eddie says, gently picking himself up and out of Richie’s lap. He gives a soft squeeze to Richie’s hand. “Let’s go to bed.” 

They sleep together that night, Richie on his back and Eddie on his side, encroaching into Richie’s space in a slow invasion that seems to last the whole night, a creeping hand over Richie’s sheets, fingers curling warm against Richie’s skin. 

Daringly, Richie takes it. Eddie doesn’t wake. Instead, he snuffles quietly in way that Richie is absolutely going to give him hell for in the morning and shuffles even closer. He still sleeps like an octopus, Richie realizes, and the nostalgic fondness that hits him is heavy and hard. 

As kids, they must have slept like this a hundred times; a _thousand. _Even when they got older, and Richie spent half the night awake and terrified that Eddie was going roll over and realize Richie’s was sporting a boner and also staring at him like a love-struck fool.

It’s kind of surreal that he can get away with both of those things now, honestly. Richie wonders when he’ll finally believe it, when it’ll start making sense to him that Eddie _chose _this.

Not tonight, at least. Probably not tomorrow either. Soon, though.

He has incredibly high hopes for soon.

.

Richie sees Eddie off to the airport the next day, heart sinking in his chest with every mile between them and the house. The drive is mostly silent, the radio quietly chattering away, and Eddie watches the city fly by out the windows, solemn and dark eyed. 

More than once Richie thinks about cracking a dumb joke, singing along to the radio in the worst voice he can manage, but every time he opens his mouth nothing comes out. 

He’s being ridiculous. He knows this. Eddie’s going to be gone for a _day. _Richie had been sitting right beside him when he booked his return flight. He’s going to be gone only long enough to break the news to Myra and convince the police to take him off the missing persons list and then he’ll be on the way back to LA and, more importantly, to Richie. Everything else can be figured out afterwards. 

Knowing he’s being ridiculous doesn’t stop him though. It rarely does. Richie Tozier wouldn’t be Richie Tozier if something as simple as logic stopped him from anything at all. 

At the airport, Eddie checks in the suitcase he couldn’t be dissuaded from taking and then the both of them go for an amble down to the food court for some mediocre coffee before Eddie has to be whisked past security and out of Richie’s sight. 

“You’re being too quiet,” Eddie tells him as they settle into a pair of uncomfortable chairs. “It’s kind of freaking me the fuck out.” 

“I’m not being quiet,” Richie says. “I’m being respectful. Of the dead.” He pauses and then clarifies, “That’s you. You’re the dead.” 

Eddie gives a long sigh. “That’s the first dumb joke you’ve made since we left the house.” 

Richie doesn’t know what to say to that. “Wow, Eds. If you missed my award-winning humor all you needed to do was tell me. I wouldn’t leave you hanging like that.” 

“It’s not award-winning when the award was for something your ghostwriter made you say,” Eddie says firmly, sipping his coffee. “And you didn’t win. You were just a finalist.” 

“My name was on the nomination,” Richie says blithely. “Besides, maybe I’m just listening to you. You’re the one always going_ ‘beep beep, Richie’.” _

His impression of Eddie manages to wrangle a smile out of him. “If I beep you, it’s because you’re a fucking menace to society. And you never listen to me about anything. Remember that time I told you not to jump into the quarry when you had those stitches?” 

“Yeah,” Richie says fondly. “And I said ‘fuck you I do what I want’ and jumped. That was the worst infection of my life. You wouldn’t touch me for, like, two weeks straight.” 

“The quarry water was _disgusting. _It’s amazing that you didn’t get gangrene and lose your whole leg.” 

“I had to stay in bed for like three days to keep the pressure off it,” Richie says. Then, remembering, “You came by after school and brought me the newest issue of Spider-man.” 

“I did,” Eddie says with a smug grin. 

Richie takes a contemplative mouthful of his coffee. “I think I still have it,” he says. “I know I had it when I left for college, at least. I couldn’t remember who gave it to me, but I remembered it was important. It survived three moves.” 

Eddie’s smugness fades to fondness. “Don’t make this sappy, I’m trying to make a point of what a dick you are.” 

Richie snorts into his drink. “I’m not sappy!” 

“Richie, you are the sappiest motherfucker I’ve ever fucking met.” 

“Well, you’ve got one part of that right. I’m definitely a motherfucker.” He wiggles his eyebrows pointedly at Eddie. 

“I realize I walked right into that, but maybe try not to behave like a child for two minutes.” 

“I’m physically incapable, actually. Chronic condition.” 

Eddie smiles at him haplessly and then glances down to his watch and pulls a face. Richie’s heart sinks. He knows what that look means. Eddie says, “I should head in. We’ll be boarding soon.” 

“Yeah,” Richie says, good humor gone. 

He follows after Eddie as far as security, tossing their empty coffee cups in the trashcan and watching as Eddie swings his compact carry-on on the belt to be scanned. It chuffs away and Eddie watches it go before turning back to Richie. “You could come with me into the departure area, you know?” 

Richie smiles wanly and tucks his hands in his pockets. “Probably a bad idea. I’d crash tackle you to stop you getting on the plane at the last second and then we’d both end up on the no-fly list.” 

“Beverly would kill us,” Eddie says. “You know she wants us to come visit for Christmas.” 

“Yeah. Better not risk it.” 

They lapse into silence, staring at each other. Eddie gets jostled by somebody trying to get through, and snaps, even though he was clearly the one at fault, “Hey, watch it, asshole.” 

Richie cannot believe that even that makes him want to swoon; Eddie’s cranky, misplaced attitude, the way the pinched white of his scar pulls taunt on his cheek. “You’re such a little gremlin,” he says fondly, and then reaches out, pulling him in by his shirt for a chaste kiss. 

Eddie’s muffled noise of annoyance dies in Richie’s mouth. He doesn’t hesitate as he kisses back, confident and self-sure. It makes Richie’s stomach turn in the best way. It’s short, barely a handful of second, and then Eddie pulls away. 

“I’ll call you tonight,” he says, laying a hand on Richie’s cheek. “After… well. After.” 

“I’ll be waiting,” Richie says, because he will be. Hopelessly. Like a fucking dog. 

Eddie pats his cheek softly, kisses him one more time, and steps away. Richie watches him slip through security; keeps his eyes on him long after he actually loses track of him in the countless throng of people. 

.

Back home, Richie mopes. 

There’s not much else to call it, really. He refuses to say pining when it’s barely been a few hours, but he’s self-aware enough to know that the listless way he flicks through TV channels and opens and closes his laptop is, perhaps, less than admirable behavior. 

At least he has Pig with him, who seems to be weathering Eddie’s absence with the same degree of anxiety. He hasn’t left Richie’s side since he came back from the airport, sprawled glumly across Richie’s bare feet and staring up at him balefully as if this is somehow Richie’s fault. 

“Don’t look at me, buddy,” Richie says, scratching behind his ear. “Eddie does what Eddie wants.” 

At some point, Richie’s tension hits a peak. Tired of his own insufferable company, he calls the only other friend he has in this stupid city. To his credit, Bill listens to Richie’s pointless, ambling rants with a degree of patience most people do not, filling the pauses between sentences with the appropriate amount of uh-huh’s and oh’s. 

Eventually, when Richie runs out of bullshit to spew, he asks, _“Where’s Eddie?”_

Richie wishes he weren’t so fucking predictable and also that all his friends haven’t known him and all his tells since he was a fucking child. “Not here,” he says vaguely. 

_“And what state does ‘not here’ happen to reside in?”_ Bill asks. 

“Oh, fuck off,” Richie says. He pinches the bridge of his nose, knocking his glasses askew and admits, “New York.” 

_“Oh,”_ Bill says after a second, sounding surprised. _“Like… for good? Or…?” _

“No,” Richie says immediately, a visceral gut reaction. “No, just to, like, come back from the dead again. Legally this time.” 

_“What about his wife?”_ Bill asks, probably not intending to be unkind but hitting Richie where it hurts all the same. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “To, uh, break up with her.” 

There’s a pregnant pause, heavy with understanding. Richie holds his breath, although he couldn’t say why. Bill asks, _“Do you need me to come over?” _

“I’m fine,” Richie says. “I don’t need a babysitter.” 

_“Sure,”_ Bill agrees. _“But what about some company?” _

Richie thinks about disagreeing, but in the end he doesn’t have it in him. “Please,” he says wearily. 

_“Give me a two hours,”_ Bill says and hangs-up without another word. 

.

Richie spends his first night away from Eddie trying to teach Bill Denbrough how to shamelessly cheat at poker. Bill is, perhaps unsurprisingly, even worse than Richie, who has never exactly been an industry professional. 

“You’re too honest, Billiam,” Richie says, as Bill’s anxious face gives away his weak bluff in an instant. “Somebody really should give you some lessons in the fine art of the white lie.” 

Bill sighs, setting down his cards. “Well, I’m pretty sure Mike’s schedule is just too full these days.” 

Richie grins broadly. “Ouch. And when the poor man isn’t even here to defend himself. Absolutely brutal.” 

“Are you going to show me your hand or not?” Bill asks. “Because if you’re folding, that means I win…” He squints at the tabletop. “All eleven goldfish crackers.” 

Richie fans his cards out. “Would you look at that.” Richie sweeps the crackers back towards his side of the table, leaving a trail of crumbs behind. He pops one in his mouth, crunching obnoxiously. “Five aces against your three. Think I win this round again.” 

Despite himself, he can see Bill cracking a smile. “Where the fuck do you keep getting these extra cards from?” 

“Here and there,” Richie says breezily, as if he does not have a half dozen decimated card decks living in the garage after he harvested them for their juiciest parts. “It’s a skill I wouldn’t expect you to understand when you can’t even keep a straight face for one whole hand.” 

Bill rolls his eyes and pushes the cards away. “No more,” he says. “I can’t stomach seeing you trying to discretely pull another fucking ace from your sleeve again, Rich. You’re not good at it. You’ve never been good it.” 

“That’s why we’re practicing,” Richie says. “Don’t you wanna challenge Haystack for all his assets? Did you know Forbes once called him ‘the most promising architect of our generation’?” 

“Yeah,” Bill says. “And TV Weekly called you ‘the greatest black stain on comedic history’. What’s your point?” 

Richie sighs. “You’ve got no ambition.” 

Before Bill can get in another snide comment, Richie’s phone goes off, rattling loudly against the tabletop. Eddie’s name flashes brightly on the screen. It’s absolutely ridiculous that Richie’s stomach should turn over so fiercely as he scrambles to pick up. 

“Hey, Eds,” he greets. “How’s life in the five-foot-nine apple?” 

_“Fuck you,”_ Eddie says, but it’s both without heat and supremely exhausted._ “That’s not even funny. Has your vocabulary gotten dumber since I last spoke to you?” _

Across the table, Bill raises an eyebrow, a telling smile on his face. In something that might only barely pass for a whisper, he asks, “Does he sound as pathetic as you look?” 

Richie scowls and gets to his feet, flipping him off and making a beeline for the backdoor. He can hear Bill laughing behind him. 

_“Is there somebody else there?”_ Eddie asks as Richie slips back out onto the porch. 

“Just Bill,” Richie says. “I’ve been trying to teach him to cheat at cards all night. It will both shock and awe you, I think, to hear that he’s absolutely useless at it.” 

Eddie doesn’t laugh, but the deep sigh he lets out is close enough to it. _“Stop corrupting our friends.” _

“Come home and make me,” Richie challenges, sinking down onto the closest deckchair.

_“Soon,”_ Eddie says. Richie can faintly hear him moving about on the other end of the line, and he allows himself to imagine it; Eddie in his hotel room, kicking off his shoes neatly by the door, setting his keys down beside the bed. A mimicry of the actions he’d seen him do dozens of times since he’d shown up on his doorstep._ “God, I never thought I hated New York before, but I’m seriously wondering if that was just another thing I might have repressed.” _

“Today went that good, huh?” Richie asks sympathetically. 

_“I spent six hours in a police station trying to explain that yes, I am Edward Kaspbrak, and yes, I am neither dead nor missing despite what all the paperwork in their system might say. So yeah, you can say it went that fucking good.” _

“What did you tell them?” 

_“That I’m forty years old, and if I vanish for a month without telling anybody that isn’t technically illegal and if they want to charge me with anything I’m going to call my lawyer.”_

“Damn, Eds,” Richie says, admiration thick in his voice. “You really just went for it, huh?” 

_“Being considered a missing person is the most exhausting thing and I don’t fucking recommend it.” _

“I think we’ve got more than our fair share of dying between us now,” Richie says. Before his courage can fail him, he clears his throat and asks, “How did… how did the rest of it go?” 

Eddie is quiet for a second. Richie stares fixedly out over the pool and tries to keep himself from feeling sick with anticipation. After a beat, Eddie says, _“It went about as well as I expected.” _

Richie’s heart trips. “So you really…?” 

_“Really, what, Rich?”_ Eddie’s voice is hard. _“Really went through with it? Did you think I wouldn’t?” _

“No,” Richie says, in what is a blatant and obvious lie. 

There’s a soft thump that sounds as if Eddie has just fallen back on his bed. _“We have got to talk about your crippling trust issues,”_ Eddie says. 

Richie scowls. “I don’t have fucking trust issues.” 

_“Oh, sorry, would you prefer if I said crippling self-esteem issues?” _

It’s like a pinch to an exceptionally raw nerve and Richie snaps, “Shut the fuck up, okay? I know I’m being dumb as shit and clingy. I get that. You don’t have to rub salt in the wound, you asshole.” 

_“Richie, shit. That’s not what I meant. God, this is the worst conversation to try and have over the fucking phone.” _

“Let’s not have it at all then,” Richie suggests. 

_“You’re not being clingy,” _Eddie says stubbornly, because he’s never listened to a word Richie’s said a day in his life. _“I’m just being an asshole. I just - I wish you would trust me when I tell you things. Do you really think people leave their wives on a fucking whim?” _

“According to approximately a thousand lifetime movie specials, yeah.” 

_“Okay then, asshole. Do you really think people confess to their lifelong best friend after being magically resurrected from the dead on a whim?” _

“I don’t think our subject pool is broad enough to have a definitive answer one way or the other,” Richie says blithely, but he can feel the awful tension in his gut easing anyway. It’s truly stupid how little effort Eddie needs to exert to get Richie to calm down. 

_“When I get back to LA,”_ Eddie says, _“we’re going to have a talk, Richie. I swear to god.” _

“Or we could not do that, and we could make out instead?” 

_“Oh, yeah, we’re doing that for sure,” _Eddie says. _“That was never a question.” _

Richie can’t help but smile, glancing paranoidly over his shoulder to make sure Bill isn’t lingering about to make fun of him for how dopey he’s sure it looks. There’s nobody there. It’s just Richie sitting in the quiet dark. Summoning up his courage, he says, “Is it stupid that I miss you?” 

Eddie laughs; a kind, warm sound. Richie didn’t know he’d been waiting for it until his stomach unknots and his shoulders sink._ “Maybe,”_ Eddie says,_ “but I miss you too, Trashmouth, so I’m pretty sure that makes us both stupid.” _

God. Richie can’t believe he’s spent the whole day so fucking worried about _nothing. _So what if Eddie has to go back to New York? So what if Eddie has to see his fucking _wife? _Eddie Kaspbrak might take a lifetime to make a decision, but once he’s made it he’s as immovable as stone. “What time are you getting back tomorrow?” 

_“Late afternoon,”_ Eddie says. _“If traffic isn't awful, I’ll probably be home by, like, five.” _

“Are you _sure _you don’t want me to come pick you up?” Richie asks, not in the least because it’d mean he gets to see Eddie whole two hours sooner. “You know I’m just going to be sitting around uselessly on my ass anyway.” 

_“I’m sure. Besides,”_ Eddie says, in a voice that makes Richie’s back shoot straight, _“I don’t really want to have to sit beside you in a car for two fucking hours and not even be able to touch you.” _

Richie’s mouth feels like a desert. “Yeah, that’d be - um.” He has a picture perfect image of Eddie’s hands in his head, the soft way they’d pushed against Richie’s chest as he laid him out in this very fucking chair. “I mean, the airport _does _have bathrooms.” 

_“I’m not hooking up with you for the first time in an airport bathroom, Richie,”_ Eddie informs him. _“And I’m definitely not going to do anything while either of us are driving, because that is such a stupid fucking way to die.” _

“What? Proving to the whole world that you know how to have fun after all?” 

_“Being found dead in the front seat with my hand on your dick and your pants around your ankles.” _

It’s so fucking morbid, and Richie hangs his head, grinning like an idiot and pressing the back of his wrist to his mouth because he feels like the sheer euphoric giddiness might just burst out of him at any moment. “Stop, Eds,” he says in his breathiest voice, “you’re turning me on.” 

Eddie laughs again, fond and affectionate. _“Alright, it’s nearly one in the morning,”_ he says, “_and if I sleep through my alarm and miss my flight I’m going to be so pissed.” _

“Yeah, me too,” Richie says. “You’ll text me, yeah?” 

_“Of course I will, asshole,”_ Eddie says. _“Is Bill staying there tonight?” _

Richie glances back towards the house. He can dimly make out Bill’s back through the glass, sprawled on the floor with Pig. “I think so, yeah.” 

_“Tell him I said hi.” _

“No. Call him yourself, coward.” 

He can’t exactly hear it, but he _knows _Eddie’s rolling his eyes. _“Go play host, Richie.” _

_I love you, _Richie wants to say, but he wonders if that’d be too weird. Too much. He clears his throat. “Goodnight, Eds.” 

_“Yeah,”_ Eddie says. _“Goodnight. Love you.” _

He hangs up, and Richie sits there, phone pressed to the ear, until his heart stops boxing at his ribs. 

.

Bill stays with him for breakfast the next morning, making some truly excellent eggs that put Richie’s limited culinary talent to shame. He eats at least four and promptly lays himself out on the sofa with a stomach ache that is half nerves and half indulgence. 

“You know,” Bill says, shrugging into his coat, “I can stick around for a little bit longer if you need me to.” 

Richie waves him off, face down in the cushions. “It’s fine,” he says. “I know you’re busy. You didn’t even have to stay this long.” 

“We’re not having that conversation about needing things verses wanting things again,” Bill says sternly. 

Richie snorts. “You’re starting to sound like Eddie.” 

“Like a rational human being?” 

Richie doesn’t have a comeback for that so he settles for flipping Bill off, still an immovable lump in the couch. He hears Bill laugh, and then a hand squeezes his shoulder, gentle and warm. “Make sure you let me know when Eddie gets back, okay?” 

“It’ll be the top of our priority list,” Richie lies, because Richie’s priority list contains mostly kissing Eddie until he forgets what air even tastes like. 

Bill leaves, and Richie spends an hour or so half dozing in the living room, waking only to check his watch and see the minute hand slowly crawl by. Eventually, he hauls himself upright with a groan to find Pig sitting by the coffee table, watching him with wide, hopeful eyes. 

“I didn’t forget to walk you,” Richie says. “I’ve just been distracted.” 

Because Pig is the light of his life, he doesn’t make a thing about it. Richie fishes the lead out from the junk drawer in the kitchen and goes for a lazy stroll around the neighborhood. At one point he nearly walks straight into a power pole his head is so caught in the clouds, but manages to sidestep it at the last second. Pig is, of course, absolutely no help at all. 

By the time they get back to the house Richie still had five hours to kill, and he kind of wants to cry. He doesn’t know how the waiting for Eddie to be back is somehow worse than him being gone at all, but god fuck is it managing to be. 

He calls Steve. He pretends to write. At one point, he even gives up procrastination and washes the dishes Bill had left politely stacked by the sink. Finally - _finally - _his phone goes off in his pocket. 

**Eddie  
** _Leaving now. Please promise me the house isn’t a disaster or I’m going right back to New York. _

Richie’s grin is more than slightly unhinged. He takes a picture of the full sink and sticks a line of kissy faces on the end, because he’s sure they’ll make Eddie wrinkle his nose something fierce. After a second, he adds, _cant wait for you to be back im going crazy here eds. _

Eddie’s reply is almost instant. 

**Eddie  
** _You’re not the only one. _

It’s not particularly emotive or soppy, but Richie just about swoons.

After the dishes, Richie takes a quick shower, considers shaving, decides it’d be weird, and buttons up his nicest shirt. After a moment of hesitation he decides that’s probably weird too and trades it out for the one with the pineapples on it that he knows Eddie hates and instantly feels much better. 

It’s still not even four. Richie retreats back to the living room, Pig following after him on stout legs, and the both of them fold back up onto the couch. Richie puts on some true crime special from Netflix and somehow, despite his intentions, winds up getting suckered into it. 

At some point, he slides down the couch, head nestled on the armrest and Pig sprawled over his leg, and he realizes that he’s actually way more fucking tired than he thought he was. Spending the whole day wound tight with the desperate ache of waiting hit him hard. Richie’s getting too old to even _pine _properly. This is ridiculous.

He checks his watch. He still has a good hour before Eddie’s due back. He can afford to close his eyes just for a moment, just so he’s not falling asleep on Eddie’s shoulder the moment he walks through the door. Richie thinks he might genuinely die if that happens. 

Down by his legs, Pig snuffles quietly. Richie reaches down to pat him clumsily. “Yeah, buddy, I feel you,” he says, and then slips his glasses off and closes his eyes. 

Richie dreams of the hammock. Not about Eddie or himself; just the hammock slowly swaying in the faint draft that never seemed to clear. There’s light in the clubhouse even though the hatch is closed, and Richie cannot take his eyes off it. 

Somebody’s behind him. It’s not Eddie. For some reason, and Richie will never be able to explain how he knows this, he thinks it might be Stan.

The dream seems to last only a moment, but Richie wakes to the feeling of a hand in his hair and when he blinks awake he realizes that the room is dark. On the TV, Netflix is asking him if he wants to keep watching and by his feet Pig snores softly. 

In the quiet darkness, Eddie says, “Hey, Trashmouth.” 

“Eddie?” Richie slurs. He blinks upwards, straining to see without his glasses, and he can vaguely make out the shape of somebody leaning over him, braced on the arm of the sofa. “Is that… what time is it?” 

Eddie passes him his glasses and Richie fumbles to jam them on. “Nearly six. Traffic sucked.” 

Richie’s brain is still half asleep, so when he’s finally able to actually, properly look at Eddie he finds that his heart begins tripping over itself immediately. Eddie looks travel rumpled and soft, his neat polo shirt creased from hours of being crammed in too small seats in too small planes. Richie wants to wrap his arms around him desperately. “Fuck, sorry. I didn’t mean to like, actually _sleep.” _

Eddie snorts. “You’re the one who’s been home all day, I don’t know why you’re the one who needs the nap.” 

Richie does not tell him the truth, which is that Richie has been challenging Pig for the pining puppy award. Instead, he says, “Welcome home, Eds.” 

Eddie blinks, looks startled for a second, and then his face splits into a brilliant smile, warm and soft. Richie wants to feel it bloom beneath his fingertips, which he’s objectively aware is incredibly weird but he’s always been weird when it comes to Eddie. 

“God, I fucking I hate you,” Eddie says, and then leans down, one hand catching Richie’s cheek as he kisses him. 

Richie makes a surprised noise but fumbles to press into it as best as he can when he’s tangled up on the sofa with their dog like a pretzel. He reaches up, fingers catching in Eddie’s shirt, and drags him closer, opening his mouth into the kiss like he’s wanted to since Eddie kissed him for the first time just the other night. 

He half expects Eddie to pull away. He doesn’t. The angle is awkward on both of them, but Eddie’s hand slips into Richie’s hair, tilts his head with bossy confidence, and meets the slick warmth of Richie’s kiss like he’s spent his whole trip imagining just this. 

Fuck. _God. _A part of Richie is worried that maybe this is still a dream, but he’s had dreams like this before and he can always fucking tell. This is nothing but sweet, sweet reality.

Eventually, Eddie does pull away, and Richie very reluctantly lets him go if only because Richie thinks he might actually die if he doesn’t breathe. He’s not sure he remembered to at all while Eddie’s hands were on him. 

“Okay,” Eddie says after a second, and his voice is a little rough. “I wanted to shower because I feel like fucking hell after spending the whole day in fucking airports, but…” 

“But?” Richie prompts, breathless. 

Eddie’s eyes are very dark. He says, “I think I just really want you to take me to your bedroom right now even more.”

Richie stares. Eddie meets his gaze unwaveringly. “You’re - you’re not serious?” 

“Richie,” Eddie says, “I am incredibly, very serious. Are you interested or not?” 

Richie nearly sprain something launching himself off the couch, fingers snatching clumsily at Eddie’s wrist as he drags him down the hall towards his bedroom. Eddie laughs at him the whole way, Pig chasing after their feet, barking excitedly in the chaos. Richie almost feels guilty for shutting him out, but the way Eddie’s hands slide into his hair rips any other thoughts right from his head. 

When Richie was a teenager he used to have this recurring daydream about laying Eddie out on his bed, rumpled and grinning, and sliding his hands over every inch of his skin he could reach, fingertips chasing out all the hidden places he spent countless nights wondering about. In his daydream, Eddie had been still, a spectator more than a participant, because even imagining that much had felt like the biggest betrayal of his trust and Richie’s guilt had been almost as strong as his arousal. 

Now, in reality, Eddie pushes up into Richie’s palms, grabs at him with conviction. His fingers fumble along Richie’s buttons and he grunts, “God, I fucking _hate _this shirt and you know it, you asshole.” 

Richie laughs loudly, fingers tangling with Eddie’s as he hurries to help and mostly hinders. “Maybe I was just hoping it’d convince you to strip me out of it.” 

“It fucking worked,” Eddie says, pushing it off Richie’s shoulders as it falls open. “C’mon, _c’mon.” _

Richie feels like he might be hysterical. He help Eddie squirm out of his creased polo, and he’s seen Eddie without a shirt before, of course he has, but this feels so much _more. _He cannot tear his eyes from the pale wealth of his skin, the shining scar that spiders across his chest. Richie can hear his heartbeat in his ears. 

“Hey,” Eddie asks, reaching up and pressing a palm to Richie’s cheek. “You okay?” 

“Am I…” Richie trails off, laughing weakly. His eyes are watering because he doesn’t even want to blink; missing a second of this would be a _crime. _“Eddie, I think I’m going to _combust.” _

The worry in Eddie’s face is replaced by exasperated fondness. “Maybe I’ll leave you to do just that if you don’t stop staring and start helping for a change.” 

Richie doesn’t need to be told twice. 

His shaking hands trip over Eddie’s belt, stumbling over the buttons on his jeans. When he reaches for the zipper, Eddie’s hands snap down, fingers circling Richie’s wrists, and Richie stills instantly even though he feels like a livewire. 

Eddie breathes out slowly. He’s shaking, just a little bit, and Richie can see a tightness in the corner of his eyes. All the showy confidence that Eddie had been putting on finally seems to be running thin and Richie can see that he’s just as nervous about this as Richie is. It’s gratifying, in a way, to know that Richie isn’t the only one. 

Richie eyes him carefully. “Okay?” 

Eddie swallows. The grip on Richie’s wrists unravels. “Okay,” he says. 

Richie’s thumb sweeps over the zipper. He can feel the hard press of Eddie beneath it, and it turns every drop of Richie’s blood first to ice and then to fire. The relief is a punch to the gut, almost as strong as the burning excitement that follows it. 

Eddie’s enjoying this. Eddie’s getting off on this. On _him. _

_You will not cry, _Richie tells himself sternly, because he would rather die than cry during sex over something so dumb. _You will not fucking cry. _

“Richie?” 

Richie swallows and his hook his fingers around Eddie’s zipper. He pauses, gives Eddie a chance to pull him away. Eddie’s hands around his wrists squeeze once and then retreat. _Holy shit, _Richie thinks, unzips Eddie’s jeans, and then slowly works Eddie’s pants and briefs down his taunt thighs. 

Richie’s had sex with guys before. Not a lot of it, because Richie’s spent thirty years living as far back into the closet as he can get, but, you know, he’s had an _amount. _None of those guys had been Eddie. Richie feels like a fumbling virgin again, slipping a sweaty palm around Eddie’s erection and hoping he doesn’t fuck it up. 

“Have you…” Richie doesn’t know how to ask. “Have you done this before?” 

Eddie swallows thickly as Richie thumbs gently over the head of his dick but the look he shoots him is dry. “What, sex? Or sex with men?” 

“Well, I know your marriage was mostly a farce, but if you weren’t having _some _sex then I’m really -.” 

“Once or twice,” Eddie says, cutting over him. His fingers dig into Richie’s. “In college. It didn’t go very far. I was always afraid somebody would…” 

He doesn’t say what he was afraid of. Richie doesn’t need him to. He shifts up the bed, planting his free hand on the mattress by Eddie’s head, and leans down to kiss him. The angle is awkward, but the grateful, hungry way that Eddie kisses him back makes it absolutely worth it. He gasps against Richie’s mouth when he manages to twist his wrist just a little, and Richie can feel the hot trickle of precum spilling over his knuckles. 

It’s the hottest thing Richie has ever felt. He’s still wearing his sweatpants, and he’s so hard it fucking hurts, but it seems largely unimportant when compared to Eddie squirming beneath him. Richie’s heartbeat is thunder, and every inch of his skin feels burning hot. 

“Eds,” he says, voice hoarse. “Eds, can I…?” 

Eddie skids a hand into his hair. “Yes,” he says.

Richie could weep in relief. Slowly, he lowers himself down the bed, knees catching in the sheets, and Eddie watches him as he goes, mouth panting and cheeks flushed. Richie has to stop himself from grinding into the mattress because if he comes before he even gets his mouth on Eddie then he’s never going to live it down. 

Eddie wiggles up so he’s half sprawled with his back against the headboard and smooths a hand along the nape of Richie’s neck. “What about you? Have you done this before?” 

Richie tries for a confident smile. “Once or twice,” he echoes, takes a deep breath, and goes down on him.

Richie does not consider himself exactly a consummate professional when it comes to cock sucking. He’s got a diploma at most, working his way steadily up to a masters. More passion than skill, really. You wouldn’t know it for the way Eddie reacts, breath stuttering out of him, thighs tight beneath Richie’s hands. 

Richie’s face flushes deeply. He can’t stop his hips from grinding into the bed this time. Drawing this kind of reaction from Eddie of all people is just too fucking much to expect him to deal with. Richie is one man, and Eddie is kind of the paragon of all his adoration. 

“God, Richie,” Eddie says, carding a hand through Richie’s hair. “You - you’re just…” 

Richie pulls off, grinning, and asks, “Yeah? I’m what now?” 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “An egotistical fuckface, apparently,” he says, and Richie laughs, loud and hoarse. 

“Fuckface? Sure, we can do that if you want.” 

“Richie.” Eddie sounds physically pained. 

It’s difficult to stop smiling long enough to duck back down, but Richie manages. This time, he really throws himself into it, taking as much in as he can stand, and gently jacking off what he can’t. Eddie squirms beneath his hands, panting, swearing softly, and Richie wants to preserve this moment in his mind for all eternity, encase it in glass and hang it on his walls. 

In the end, it doesn’t take much to get Eddie off. They’re both too worked up, have been waiting patiently through history’s slowest slow burn, and fuck, they’re only human. Eddie’s hand in his hair tugs sharply, and his voice breaks as he says, _“Richie.” _

Richie doesn’t want to pull back. He wants to feel Eddie when he comes, taste him, but he wants to kiss him even more. Reluctantly, he slips Eddie wetly from his lips, hand taking the place of his mouth. Eddie yanks him up the bed, and Richie has to throw a hand out to stop himself from crushing him, but Eddie’s already kissing him, frantic and breathless, hands clenching in Richie’s shoulder. 

When Eddie comes, his breath hitches silently. Richie stares at him, his crumpled face, his messy hair, and feels like he’s having a religious experience. 

“Fuck,” Eddie says weakly, hips still jerking even as he pushes Richie’s hand away. “Holy _shit.” _

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, because his brain is a frantic, misfiring mess. He can’t think when all his blood is firmly in his dick. “Eds - _Eds. _God, you’re so fucking hot. I knew you would be - I fucking… I fucking knew it.” 

Eddie’s dazed eyes hit his and Richie feels positively electrified. “Have you…?” 

“Have I…?” Richie realizes what he’s asking. “Oh! No, not yet - not that there has to be a yet. I can…” He gestures awkwardly towards the bathroom, even though he thinks that if he makes any move whatsoever he’s going to explode immediately. He feels like a fucking livewire. He still has Eddie’s come on his hand, and Eddie’s hitching breath warm on his lips. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Eddie says, and then, before Richie can say anything, his hand drops to Richie’s hip and he pulls him forward, grinding Richie’s dick against his thigh, pushing back against it with ease. 

Fireworks. Fucking _supernovas. _“Holy shit,” Richie announces, voice high pitched, and comes in his pants like a teenager without either of them laying so much as a finger on him. 

He slumps forward, head pressed against Eddie’s shoulder, and breathes. Eddie’s hands slide down his sweaty back, soothing and warm. Eddie asks, “Okay?” 

Richie lets out a breath. He feels shaky all over. He doesn’t think he’s ever come that hard in his fucking life, which is ridiculous because he didn’t even get his fucking pants off. “Yeah,” he says, voice sounding cracked. “Yeah… just. Wow. That was embarrassing.” 

Eddie snorts. “I didn’t know you had any sense of embarrassment left in you after all this time.” 

“I’m an endless well of mystery,” Richie says, finally summoning the energy to wiggle off of Eddie and flop down beside him. He considers wiping his sticky hand on the sheets, but one look from Eddie is enough to tell him just how well that would go over. Hopefully, he asks, “How about we share that shower you were thinking about earlier?” 

Eddie’s nose wrinkles. “Richie, we’re not going to fit.” 

“We’ll fit,” Richie says firmly. 

They do not fit. 

Richie is seriously contemplating how he could have possibly bought such a large house that still, at every available opportunity, seems determined to keep him isolated and alone. He supposes this is what people mean when they throw around the term ‘bachelor pad’ - a house just not functionally designed for the longevity of any meaningful relationship. Not for the first time, he thinks about pitching a move to Eddie; somewhere less stilted, nearer to the others maybe. 

“Richie, get your fucking elbow out of my side or I swear to god I’m going to brain you,” Eddie snaps, trying to squirm out of his reach. “I didn’t survive that fucking clown just so you could kill me in your shower.” 

Richie reaches out to steady him as Eddie nearly slips. “You’re going to brain yourself if you’re not careful,” he says, brushing Eddie’s soaked hair from his face and delighting in the way it just flops right back down again. The scowl Eddie levels at him is impressive and more than a little bit of a turn on. “Need me to wash your hair?” 

“No,” Eddie snaps. “Because I’m not a _child.” _

“C’mon. It’ll be cute. Romantic.” 

“It’ll be you getting soap in my eyes and pulling out half my hair,” Eddie says, but when Richie wiggles around him to reach for the shampoo he doesn’t stop him. Richie does his best to be careful, out of a desire to both please Eddie and someday in the future be allowed to do this again. He doesn’t think he’s ever washed anybody’s hair before. It’s _wild. _

“At least you don’t squirm as much as Pig,” Richie says cheerfully, and this time it’s Eddie who jams an elbow in his side. 

Afterwards, they stumble into fresh clothes; unstained pair of sweatpants for Richie, and for Eddie a pair of flannel pajama pants he digs out of his luggage salvaged from New York. They look like something a grandpa might wear, even when Eddie doesn’t summon a matching button-up and just shrugs into a plain t-shirt, and Richie doesn’t even try and hide his grin. 

Eddie sees it as he’s flipping off the lights and crawling back beneath the sheets. “What?” 

“Nothing, nothing. I just think it’s cute that you dress like you’re going to bed in a nursing home.” 

“I’ve changed my mind,” Eddie announces, making to swing himself out of bed. “I’m going back to the other room. You can sleep alone.” 

Richie hurriedly slings an arm over his chest, bouncing them back down onto the mattress. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, not sorry in the slightest. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.” 

Eddie snorts. “You’d sooner die, I think.” 

“Remember that time in fifth grade where I didn’t speak to you for an entire day?” Richie says. “All because you asked me not to?” 

“Yeah, because you crashed my new bike into my own mother’s fucking _car _and scraped the paint off both of them.” Eddie’s smiling, like it’s a fond memory now even though Richie still remembers with vivid clarity the absolutely furious look on his bloodless face when he’d realized what Richie had done. “God, I don’t think I’ve ever been that mad again in my life.” 

“I noticed when you told me to never speak to you again or you’d tell my parents about the time I broke the TV set,” Richie says. “Man, I was _miserable. _I thought I’d ruined everything and you’d hate me for the rest of our lives.” 

Eddie throws his head back into the pillows and laughs. “I think I was mad at you for a record breaking six hours straight,” he says. “By the end of the day, I was just as miserable as you because it turns out I’d grown so used to your dumb voice that your silence was pissing me off more.” 

“You brought me an ice cream,” Richie remembers, nostalgic. 

“And you cried,” Eddie says, amused. 

“I was confused! I thought _I _was the one who was supposed to apologize! It messed with my head!” 

They’re both grinning at each other helplessly in the low light. Eddie’s hair is still wet from the shower, and the scar on his cheek is shiny white. Looking at him, remembering the press of his warm skin beneath Richie’s palms, fills him with an awed contentedness that he can’t even begin to measure. 

“Rich?” Eddie asks. “You alright?” 

It’s an innocent question, but it hits Richie hard somewhere deep inside. For a moment, he lets himself actually think about it; turning it over in his mind like it’s something he’d forgotten how to do. Eddie watches him closely, silently. 

“I’m fine,” Richie says, and for the first time in a long, long time it’s not a lie. “I’ve never been fucking better.” 

.

Eddie drops to sleep quickly in the end, wearied from two days of intense travel and even more intense emotions. He hasn’t talked about how his discussion with Myra had gone, not in detail, but if she’s anything at all like his mother had been - and Richie strongly suspects she is - he can make an educated guess. 

For a long while, Richie stays in bed, watching the ceiling and gently stroking his fingers through Eddie’s hair. It’s comfortable, even if his arm is going dead beneath Eddie’s weight, and Richie has a long and documented history of deeply enjoying all manner of comfortable things. Eventually though, his brain feels too hot between his ears, heartbeat thick in his veins, and he painstakingly extracts himself from the bed. 

Eddie groans and rolls over in his sleep to take the space in the mattress where Richie had been but he does not wake. 

Pig is asleep on the living room sofa when Richie slips out the bedroom door. He lifts his head, peering up at him with shimmering, slightly betrayed eyes. He’s not used to being locked out of the bedroom and very clearly doesn’t appreciate it, even if Richie thinks that it’d been for a worthy cause. 

Richie presses a finger to his lips which, going by the soft bark Pig gives, he doesn’t understand in the slightest. At least when Richie ducks into the kitchen and comes back out with the leash he seems to understand just fine. 

The night air is sluggish and warm, a humid heat that catches at Richie’s skin before they’ve even walked half the block. It does wonders for clearing the sticky cotton inside his head, melting it all away. 

Outside, with Eddie still snoring back in his bed, the events of the evening feel even more surreal; that a personal earthquake of this magnitude should strike right here, in the too-big house he’s lived in alone for five years, trying in vain to fill it full of the sound of his own voice but only hearing the silence where nobody answers. 

He kissed Eddie. He _touched _him. They _had sex. _Richie feels like the whole world should be shaking on its fucking foundations. But the sky is still a faded black, and the stars are still shining. Nothing had changed. Only Richie’s world has been altered irreparably. 

At this point, he thinks as Pig drags him back in the direction of home, he might really die if Eddie leaves him. Losing him that first time had _sucked _\- even when he hadn’t _known _who it was he was missing, the missing had still been there, a constant pebble stuck in the back of his mind. Losing him the second time had been unbearable. This time though, having actually _had _him, Richie thinks the separation would obliterate him. 

If he told Eddie that, it’d probably piss him off. Richie doesn’t think he’s emotionally equipped enough yet to handle the conversation Eddie keeps promising about his ‘self-esteem’ issues. 

Back in the house, Pig follows him back to the bedroom, eyes pleading, and Richie doesn’t have the heart to lock him out a second time. This undoubtedly proves to be a mistake when he immediately squirms through the tiny gap in the doorway and makes a running leap right for the bed, small body bouncing on the mattress and jostling Eddie’s legs. 

_“Pig!” _Richie hisses, but the damage has been done. 

Eddie rolls over, blinking blearily awake. Pig pushes his nose against Eddie’s upturned hand until Eddie, clearly better trained than their damn dog, reaches up to pat him. “Richie?” he slurs, still out of it. 

“Yeah,” Richie says, kicking his shoes off by the wall. “Sorry. Just took Pig for a walk. I wouldn’t have let him in the room if I knew he was going to behave like this.” He gives the pug a stern look and says, “Bad dog.” 

Pig blinks at him, unfazed, and claims the empty space by Eddie’s legs. 

“You took him for a walk…” Eddie squints at the alarm clock. “At two am?” 

Richie shrugs, stripping out of his sweaty shirt and crawling into bed. “Kinda wanted to clear my head a bit.” 

“Oh.” Eddie pauses and then, sounding uncertain, says, “Of anything in particular?” 

Richie reaches out and gives his hand a squeeze. “Nothing bad,” he says. “I promise. Just a lot on my mind.” 

“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” Eddie says. They fall silent for a moment, Richie tossing his glasses on the bedside table and gently trying to wrangle Pig into sharing his space, before Eddie quietly asks, “Do you think we’re moving too fast?” 

Richie rolls over. He can’t look at him properly without his glasses, but he hopes his expression is appropriately unimpressed. “Twenty-seven years, Eddie,” he reminds him. “Twenty-seven years and one death.” 

He can’t be sure, but he thinks Eddie smiles. Between them, Pig is already snoring. “Yeah, okay,” he allows. Then, “You going to sleep now or do you fancy another late night walk? This is LA. That’s how people get _stabbed, _Richie.” 

“I paid a lot of money for us to live in a neighborhood where we would not get stabbed,” Richie says, but just hearing Eddie’s familiar grousing is enough to loosen any remaining tension. “But no, I think I’m done for tonight. Too much thinking. I wanna sleep for at least a decade.” 

“One year asleep for every thought you’ve had in your life,” Eddie says, whip quick, and Richie tries to kick him, but mostly just unsettles Pig who raises his head long enough to give Richie a plaintive look before sinking back down again. 

“Go to sleep, you little asshole,” Richie says. 

Eddie reaches out, fingertips grazing softly along Richie’s cheek. “Only if you’re joining me,” he says. “We’ve got things to do tomorrow. You said Bill wanted us to call when I got back.” Eddie looks contemplative. “We should probably call the others too, while we’re at it.” 

Richie grins stupidly at him. “Maybe a family can be five losers, a zombie, and Pig the pug.” 

Eddie’s thumb sweeps over his cheek. “Five losers, a zombie, Pig the pug, and Stan,” he says, quiet and sure. 

Richie’s throat is thick. “Six losers, then. Stan doesn’t get to shrug the title just because he’s dead.” 

“But I do?” Eddie teases. 

“You’re still a Loser,” Richie assures him. “But being able to tell people I’m dating the living dead is just too good a chance to pass up.” 

“I hate you,” Eddie says without heat. 

Richie grins. “No, you don’t.” 

“No, I don’t,” Eddie agrees, and kisses him. 

.

Richie wakes up to the sound of knocking on his door. 

For a moment, he lays in bed staring up at the ceiling, and considers whether he might at this point reasonably invest in the biggest, brightest DO NOT DISTURB sign that Walmart sells. He thinks he deserves it. He really does. 

Beside him, Eddie groans, arm slung over his head. _“Again?” _he asks, aggrieved. 

Richie waits for a moment in the hazy, early-morning silence. “Maybe we can just ignore it,” he says. “Go back to sleep.” 

“Hng,” Eddie says, with feeling. 

The knocking comes again, sharp and stern. Knock-knock. Pause. _Knock-knock-knock. _

Richie sighs, throwing back the covers and climbing out of bed. “Next time,” he says, “it’s your turn to open the door for surprise visitors at eight in the fucking morning. You were the one who started this stupid trend.” 

“Next time,” Eddie agrees, passing Richie his glasses and immediately turning onto his side and going back to sleep. 

Richie stumbles out of the bedroom, chasing the sound down the hall. It can’t be Bill, Richie figures, because he’d have let himself in the first time Richie refused to get out of bed. If it’s any of the other Losers - well. Richie might have to consider cutting more keys. 

Knock-knock-knock. Pause. _Knock-knock-knock. _

“I’m coming,” Richie groans, hanging off the wall as he fumbles with the locks. “Fuck it all, I’m coming. You do not know what a personal sacrifice this is to be here. Do you know what’s waiting for me in my fucking bed right now? You couldn’t even hope to compete.” 

Richie opens the door. 

He goes still. The rising sun hurts his eyes something fierce, and Richie has to cling to the door to keep himself upright. His knees are weak. For a moment, he thinks he’s going to puke. “Holy shit,” he says, voice wavering. 

From where he’s occupying Richie’s doorstep looking like death-warmed over but so incredibly, amazingly, _awe-inspiringly _alive, Stan gives a weary smile and says, “Hey, Richie. I didn’t know where else to go.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're done!! That's a wrap!!! I can't believe I wrote 40k+ of fic in a month, but here we are, and I'm so glad I got to share it with people! And that people have been reading it and enjoying it! I hope this last chapter has been as fun for you all to read as it has been for me to write. I always intended to bring Stan back, and here he is - the Losers reunited at last. I will absolutely be posting more in this series, so if that interests you, feel free to keep your eye out. 
> 
> Once again, I would not have had the energy or motivation to write and share this much so quickly without all the lovely comments. Thank you all so so so so much. 
> 
> tumblr: glenflower  
twitter: @doingwritebyme

**Author's Note:**

> I have been going absolutely crazy writing this fic, but I have so many emotions and not enough room to contain them all. If you're interested, please feel more than welcome to come yell about reddie with me at: 
> 
> tumblr: glenflower  
twitter: @doingwritebyme


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